24 Year old newbie. The Fap stops here.

The beginning of the end.

Introduction.

Hello everyone. I hope everyone is doing well today. Particularly with regards to fighting the good fight against PMO but also keeping safe amid this Covid-19 crisis.

I'd also like to start by thanking this forum for giving myself and numerous others a platform to, as the motto for this website goes, "get a new grip on life."

This will be a long one but I have divided it up into the following steps so you can see what is to come and make it more digestible.

• Introduction.
• My relationship with porn from the beginning.
• The decline.
• Where I am at now.
• What have I done to address this issue up until now and the positives from those attempts.
• What I want to achieve.
• How I am going to achieve it.
• Summary

Forgive me for this long post. I feel that if I document my journey candidly and in full, I believe I will be able to address the full extent of this issue with PMO and it's associated issues more effectively. I have often tackled problems in my life by writing things down. That way, all the thoughts and emotions are laid out individually and can be tackled one by one. This contrasts with keeping them all in my mind where they combine to form a vicious storm that's very difficult to control.

Imagine if you will, a giant chocolate bar. Huge. A behemoth of a bar. Taller than most people and more than twice as heavy. This may sound nice, but actually, it represents a huge problem. Like big problems in real life, if you try to tackle it, or in this case, eat it all in one go, it becomes overwhelming and you will just be sick.

However, if you break down the large problem, or chocolate bar, into little chunks and give yourself time to deal with it, before you know it, you will have eaten the chocolate bar or dealt with the huge problem.

Anyways, I digress. Of course, everyone is different, but that is the beauty of this site, everyone is welcome. That just so happens to be an insight into my mind.

My relationship with porn from the beginning

I have been viewing porn in one way or another since I was circa 11 years old.

Interestingly, the content that I have viewed has stayed broadly the same since that time. Simply put, female models, celebs and incredibly vanilla porn. A lot of it hasn't even included sex at all.

In retrospect, I have always been put off by large portions of porn. Something I have certainly grown to realise as I have gotten older. I realised I want to treat women with huge amounts of respect and potential girlfriend's with affection on top of that. Being a gentleman fills my heart with joy and also gets me off too in the context of making love. Most of porn is incredibly aggressive, violent and reduces humans to just pieces of sexual meat.

I have found myself skipping through a lot of videos to avoid the overly aggressive sections. Granted, porn doesn't pretend to be anything else but it is definitely not something I wish to support. I have been wary of the dark nature of porn for a while and that heavily influenced the content that I consumed. I either viewed the soft-core stuff or skipped around content I didn't want to see.

So while the content I have been consuming has been relatively mild and not something that I feel particularly shameful about, the problem has come from the level of consumption and my body's response to it. I will elaborate but it is still incredibly addictive.

From the beginning of my masturbatory days to around 20 years old, I would say that my masturbation habits were not at addiction levels. I definitely didn't "need" to view porn everyday and I didn't have a dependant relationship with it. I would masturbate 3 to 4 times a week but only when my body commanded me too. The sexual side to my body was incredibly virile and erections were fantastic.

However though, that was roughly a decade of conditioning my body to respond sexually to visual stimuli on a screen. Furthermore, due to work commitments at school and social ineptitude, I hadn't had sex and have only had sex a very small handful of times since. This stimuli was and still is the only conditioning my body receives when it comes to sexual content. My mind had been saturated by it all and the effect, unbeknownst to me, was going to set in.

The decline

From about 20 years old to now at 24, I have been on a slow decline, in a few ways. Like with addictive drugs, your body gets used to a certain level before demanding more to get the same effect.

At the start of the decline, slowly but surely, sessions were lasting longer. They certainly were if I still wanted to have a good session. More tabs, more videos. More edging. Penis becoming less sensitive. Starting to only respond to certain hand techniques so to speak. The common term around here for that would be death grip I believe. Erections were still normal however. Morning glory etc.

However, as this saturation went on and the death grip continued, my sex drive really started to drop, my penis became less sensitive and erections were not as common.

Where I am at now

I am now at the following stage. I believe I have been at this stage for about a year or two now. I only get erections reliably if masturbate myself to have one. Morning glory, random ones and wet dreams are non existent now. Also rather worryingly, when I look at hot stuff, my penis doesn't really respond. Only if I play with it in a death grip manner. It doesn't respond in any other way. If I stop masturbating, it deflates very quickly.

In the past year I have had really long sessions in this way. Christ knows how much sensitivity has been knocked out of me but it's not good. Orgasms are not the same as they were before either. Especially if I don't masturbate for that long.

Lastly and again worryingly, I masturbate habitually now. Not because I'm horny, but because Im bored and it feels like it's part of a shitty routine now. I masturbate now, not because I want to, but because it's THE thing to do. So I'll just sit there and masturbate. My body just craves that dopamine hit now, especially as it feels like it is part of the routine now. Also, i'm looking at porn a lot more now. Again not when I'm horny, but because it's part of the routine. I'll find myself typing stuff in before I even realise. Every time I sit on the toilet and when I get into bed are the two most common ones. As you can imagine, this often leads to a session.

In summary, my penis has very little sensitivity, erections are only brought on by myself and I am dependant on looking at porn every day as part of a shitty routine. I have tried to stop to no avail so far. I have realised this to be an issue for about a year now. I have certainly known about this website, the reddit page and the physiological effects of porn for that period of time. Some of the information on this page is very useful, as are some of the TED Talks about this issue.

What have I done to address this issue up until now and the positives from those attempts.

As aforementioned, I would say that I have come to terms with the fact this is a real concern for about a year now. To put it succinctly, I haven't succeeded in addressing the issue conclusively because I have not put the correct effort and methodology into my goals. There have been times where I've kinda forgotten about the issue and just made excuses for not dealing with it. One of which is that I don't have a girlfriend. Just stupidity really. I have taken the easy way out basically. That stops here. It has been in my mind the whole time. I will outline my initial plan of action in the next section.

The good news is that there have been some positives to my attempts. I have completed a handful of streaks where I went between 4-7 days without masturbating. Even in those streaks, I noticed a positive difference! Erections were harder and didn't need quite so much firm encouragement from my hand. One streak I even managed to go three weeks. Gosh that made a noticeable difference. An even lighter grip was needed and my penis was more eager to get going on its own. Still not ideal but an improvement. The resulting orgasm was also the first properly strong one for ages where the pleasure completely and utterly consumed me. It was wonderful.

In my attempts, I haven't really made any mitigating efforts. No porn filters, no journalling or support from any others. That has ultimately been the route of my failures. I haven't tried hard enough.

So my attempts up until now have shown that staying away from porn and masturbation can have positive effects and have highlighted very obvious ways I can do better.

What I want to achieve.

I have noticed on this site that people out on their profile exactly what they wish to abstain from or remove from their life. A combination of porn, masturbation and orgasm.

Firstly, I want to remove watching porn voluntarily from my life. It's hard to remove porn completely from my life as the whole media is full of it in varying degrees. However, I want to get to the point where my first instinct is not masturbation. As previously mentioned, I have also consumed a lot of celebrity content. While not porn in the traditional sense, I want to get to the point where again, upon seeing a female celebrity that I like, my first instinct is something other than dropping my pants.

As for masturbation and orgasm, my initial plan is to complete abstain from it. My ultimate goal really is to have full blooded, proper erections and to feel genuinely horny again. This at the very least involves abstaining from MO for a long time. I have seen how some reboots can take a year. My journal will help with this plan as I feel it will evolve as my journey plays out. I wanted to have an initial plan for MO to follow as not having a plan is just a plan for failure.

In the future, will I ever masturbate again? Right now thats the bit I am not sure about. One thing that will be for certain though is if I do, it will not be with a death grip. Plenty of lube and probably with an artificial vagina. Also, once a week. No more than that. Finally, it will be if my body commands me. Not if I command my body to respond to my cheap dopamine craving.

How I am going to achieve it.

There are a few simple ways I am going to do this and a few that need a bit of elaboration. The simple ones first:

• Porn filters on both laptop and phone.
• Block reddit on both laptop and phone.
• Try and put keyword filters on Google for certain celebs. Or just block Google images when I don't need to actually look at a picture of something.
• Delete all hot images and videos that are saved.
• Im thinking about deleting Instagram. I think that is a minefield but we shall see how that goes.
• Putting my laptop and phone away from me when I am in bed. Bed is a trigger.

Another way I am doing it is with this website of course! I feel if I document my journey and actually engage with the issue, I will make a more conscious effort. This will be an outlet for the issue to be in the forefront of my mind. Plus is will give me a distraction for when an urge comes. When they do come. I come on here and distract myself with the forums or post something.

Another way to stop urges that I will use is to get up and move when they come. Do ANYTHING else.

Furthermore, I need to engage my brain more. I need to distract myself with productive activities so that my body sees those aspects of my life as part of my routine. Not masturbation. That will be a way I distract and recondition myself. I have thus started a website coding course!

The good news is that I have a very busy job and I love going to the gym so that will help too.

Also, I will back this up with a trip to the doctors too.

Summary

In summary, I view porn too much and my penis is completely desensitised. I am sick to shit of it and I want it to change. Whilst I have tried to change this part of my life before, using this site amongst other methods will actually allow me to have a success.

I feel I can succeed, so I am optimistic. I believe that my brain can recondition itself. Also, even if it takes a year. I will still only be 25. Also, I have a burning desire to make a woman happy. Whilst there are many aspects of a relationship that are important, sex life cannot be ignored. I believe I have the tools to do that, it's just arguably the most important one is not firing on all cylinders atm. Still, it's a very positive reason to undergo this journey in addition to freeing my mind from porn.

I will start documenting my journey in the journal section from here on out. If you want, I can say a bit more about myself although I will remain anonymous. I was a bit nervous when typing this. Also, I do have some thoughts on porn in general; like how it's the biggest problem that never gets talked about openly in society. Also how I think it should NEVER be accessible to children at such a young age. It's utter madness. I can elaborate a bit more on that in the journal. Might even be good topics to write about when the urges come.

Big respect if you have made it this far! Thank you very much for reading and have a great day!

GoodbyePorn.

 

Thank you very much for your well wishes on my journey! Much appreciated!

 

Hello to you too! Thank you for saying hi. I also wish you well on your journey and thank you for reaching out and offering support. I will be posting something on the reboot log soon. My/our journey begins here!

 

You know, that is a very good point. One day, I will be able to look back at how far I've come from this point. It should be an amazing confidence boost. Thank you also for your support! I hope I can help you too!