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Day 1, Rebooting

Discussion in 'Rebooting - Porn Addiction Recovery' started by HellComestoFrogtown, May 1, 2020.

  1. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Thanks for the response! Congrats on hitting 30 days. I’m so happy to hear that you are doing so well. I am now on day 43 and I just triggered like crazy. I have been pretty lax about “researching” hot actresses, and stuff like that. My goal in doing this is to stop masturbating, which I have been successful in. I only want to avoid sexual stimuli not because viewing in itself is a problem (I don’t have a serious habit), but because it could prove a threat to ceasing masturbation. I just watched a very cool film from Hong Kong called Naked Killer that had almost no nudity, but was highly erotic. That was almost unpleasant, I was so turned on while watching it haha. Just now, I put on a music video with Nicki Minaj in it and I had to turn it off. I can’t even imagine how I would’ve responded to imagery like that as a teenager (actually, I know exactly how I would’ve responded: by masturbating). Anyway, it flooded my brain with that porn feeling, which I am pleased to report actually feels sort of unpleasant. I put on some brutal rock music as a sort of sonic cold shower, then posted. Just waiting for the arousal to dissipate.
     
  2. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Day 52! Woo hoo. No jerking off now feels normal. Not to suggest the urges haven’t left (I’m experiencing one right now). But I am excited to be doing this. My stress tolerance increased and my anxiety has gone down generally (even though circumstances have really amped it up the last few weeks).
     
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  3. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Day 61. I’ve had a knot in my stomach on and off the last week all so, although I assume that has more to do with current events than NoFap.
     
  4. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Day 74. Wow, I can’t believe I’ve gone this long. I will say that my behavior has been on the razor’s edge of what’s acceptable (I have adhered to my no-solo-sexual-activity plan, but some of the stuff I’ve done with my girlfriend is very close to the behaviors I’ve been trying to quit). My desire for women that aren’t my girlfriend has really amplified. I’ve been joking a lot about threesomes (which is something I’m actually opposed to, although good luck convincing my dick of that) and have questioned my relationship satisfaction. The thing is, my relationship is very good — there is trust, honest communication and mutual attraction. But I’m feeling that addictive urge to sleep with other women, and it bothers me. Now, I have never cheated and will never cheat, but the desire for other women has been really nagging me. I am good at resisting urges, but hope that eventually these feelings will diminish or disappear. I feel like my lifestyle before I met my girlfriend— obsessively hooking up with various women — has framed monogamy in such a way that it is a sexual deescalation. This is problematic, and I am hoping that by continuing with NoFap I find a solution to these obsessive thoughts.
     
  5. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    I relapsed. After weathering much temptation and achieving a 79 day streak, I asked my girlfriend if she would like to view some porn together. She was into the idea. My “logic” was that if porn’s fundamental problem is that it is destructive to intimacy, how could looking at it together be so bad? So, we watched it together. It was very exciting. All was well, until... two hours later, when I found myself beset by the urge to watch again, this time by myself. As a longtime sober addict/alcoholic, I am intimately acquainted with addiction and what it feels like — I AM ADDICTED TO PMO. An ever-growing mountain of evidence proves this beyond the shadow of a doubt. It doesn’t matter how long I avoid porn — months, years — my brain has been permanently programmed. Experience has proven that porn will always lead to an obsessive usage that causes great anxiety for me, and that masturbation has always eventually led to porn. Should I ever become single again (I assume I won’t, but you never know), I believe it may become necessary for me to find some way of moderating with masturbation (without the use of porn) as a way of preventing me from seeking meaningless, real life sex and/or climbing the walls all the time. Perhaps that is the wrong approach, and hopefully it is a question I will never have to answer. Put for right now, there is no need for me to masturbate at all. The last few months went very well avoiding it altogether, and my underlying issues with intimacy likely underpinning my porn addiction came to the surface (which is perhaps the reason for my relapse). I am going to press on addressing the underlying cause of this addiction, and stop feeding it. Eventually, I believe that I will achieve a healthy, fulfilling sex life (porn is the opposite of fulfilling; it’s stress-inducing, gross Andre obsession to view can become all-consuming).
     
  6. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Day 2. I had a lot of porn cravings yesterday. Normally, when I’ve tried to quit in the past, I’ve waited until I was kind of burned out on it. Not this time, and it’s giving me second thoughts. With that in mind, the anxiety I experience from porn does not make it worth it. This 79 day clean streak helped bring an intimacy issue in my relationship to the surface, and that is helping to inspire me to stay away from porn. I am reiterating because I need to get it through my head: I AM ADDICTED TO PORN AND WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO USE IT IN MODERATION. Anytime I use it, the obsession to keep doing so is reactivated. It does not matter how much time passes, my brain has been permanently rewired to respond that way. That does not make a bad person, it just means that viewing porn reduces my quality of life, providing a fleeting thrill, the inherent unfulfillment of which inevitably (and unwaveringly) drives me to keep viewing. The funny thing is, porn encourages real life sex with casual partners, promising that the fulfillment will come from acting it out in real life. I’ve done plenty of that, however, and I can promise that it was just as unfulfilling as porn. My goal this time is to eliminate porn not to deprive myself, but to create space for the kind of intimacy I assume is actually fulfilling.
     
  7. 72jbjekapm

    72jbjekapm Fapstronaut

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    I'm at about d
    I've had some of the same ideas of what you have just went through and I'm at day 75. I keep thinking of celebrating my success by binge PM, there are pieces of it that I miss, but I also have felt many benefits from the new path in on. Based off how you feel, what can you do to help me change my thought process. Congrats on the 79 days, is this your first go around? This is my first, it took a long time before if figured out what was going on with me and now I believe this PM has been a big part of my depression, guilt, lack of focus. Was she aware of the new journey you're on? My wife is aware and supports the idea, she had excepted my addiction for years, it was a big issue for a long time early on in our relationship, but I wasn't going to change it for her. Now I finally realized I have to do this for myself first, then hopefully the whole family will gain the benefits of me being a better version of myself. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, thanks for your post.
     
  8. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    First off, congratulations on 75 days! That’s incredible. It’s also very flattering that you would ask for my advice. This was my first go round with the official NoFap community, but I have been on and off of porn for years. As someone who just relapsed, I would strongly encourage you to NOT follow in my footsteps. The simple fact is, if porn was working for us, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. When I was single, it didn’t work for me, and now that I’m in a committed relationship, it also doesn’t work for me. My girlfriend was aware of my efforts to quit porn, and she is supportive because it’s something I want to do, but she was never bothered by it much personally. However, she is very much disturbed by the effects of my fear of intimacy, which I believe underpins (and is exacerbated by) my porn addiction. Getting back to your situation, I assume that neither of us have even come close to appreciating the real benefits of quitting pornography. I have seen this happen in the drug/alcohol recovery community — people expect results too soon, and make the mistake of believing that the life they have after a few months of staying clean is the best sobriety has to offer. I can personally attest to the falseness of this conviction. I assume that you and I both are/were experiencing a phase devoid of porn’s thrills, and not yet enjoying the true pleasures of intimacy. The only way for us to get to the good stuff is to KEEP AVOIDING PORN. To celebrate sobriety through relapse would be like celebrating a birth by murdering the child. Poison ivy only goes away when you stop scratching it. Our urges to use porn are not permanent, only the death throes of a poisonous habit desperate to keep us in its grasp. Our bodies are driven toward sex much like they are driven toward sugar. For years, I ate processed sugar addictively. When I quit, it was extremely dramatic. My mind and body felt awful. But the cravings that — for as long as I could remember — felt like they were a part of the very fabric of my being, eventually went away (for the most part). My body is still drawn to sugar now, but I get it through mostly natural sources, like apples, cherries and honey. Fruit contains sugar, but it also contains fiber. Fiber allows the sugar to breakdown slowly, so that our bodies are not thrown out of whack by blood sugar spikes. Processed sugar isolates this pleasure-inducing element and turns it into a drug. Isn’t that like porn? Porn takes the most thrilling part of a committed relationship and isolates it. And it feels exhilarating. But it can never satisfy us, and the result of using it (for me, anyway) has been destructive.
     
  9. 72jbjekapm

    72jbjekapm Fapstronaut

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    Thank you for getting back, I appreciate your time and agree with you and I will continue to hang in there. I used to be addicted to the gym, which is great, but that was all I focused on, not much balance of other joys in life. Now I have so many different hobbies and focus better on myself and family. You don't know how much it means to me, thank you again, let's keep going. I've quit weed 15 years ago and it was a struggle, but I know I would not want to feel that way again either, so I'd imagine pm being in the same category, I also quit drinking the same time I started this journey. I'm missing those highs, but I'm sure with time, I can get that and more from my wife. Stay safe, and thank you
     
  10. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    It’s my pleasure, man. It sounds like you and I have an awful lot in common (I too quit weed and drinking, and used to be a gym addict as well). I don’t know about you, but I needed a 12 step program to do it. I still attend a fellowship so many years after the fact. Congratulations on your sobriety and your commitment to staying off porn! Thanks for the inspiration to stay off the porn myself.
     
  11. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Day 5. Had some very pornesque dreams last night. Not to mention some extremely intense anxiety the last couple days. There was a sense of my porn addiction really having escalated this time around. All the more reason to stay away from it. The kind of aftermath-anxiety I have been experiencing is truly akin to the kind of anxiety one might feel in the wake of using hard drugs. Porn is an extremely powerful substance.
     
  12. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Day 6. I’ve been so irritable the last couple of days. My girlfriend and I are quarantined together, and she is really aggravating me. Luckily, the cravings have reduced. But I’ve done this enough times to know it’s only a matter of time until they’re back with a vengeance. I’ll be ready for them when they come.
     
  13. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Day 7! Another week of freedom. I need to start thinking in those terms. I was just giving some thought to the psychology of my relapses. I usually decide that quitting porn is somehow extra, or not truly necessary. I rationalize that it’s just images on a screen, so how much of an impact can it really have? Even as I write those words, they seem sensible. But they’re wrong. Porn is proving a threat to the health of my relationship. And it’s effect is extremely powerful. How is it that just binging for a few days messed up my entire week? The intense PHYSICAL sensations I just experienced were just as real as any drug hangover (of which I’ve had many, when I was younger). The irritability and anxiety. It’s just not worth it. Porn is a drug. I am happier in general when I avoid it.
     
  14. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Day 8. I had some porn dreams last night. How bizarre is that? When I was a teenager, I had SEX dreams. Porn is (supposed to be) an inspiration for actual sex, and yet ultimately worms its way in as a substitute. As I continue to recover, I’m noticing that I’m recalling the sexual awakening of my youth more fondly. Not that I was actually very sexual during this time (until the age of 18, I had only ever made-out with girls). I am remembering the intoxicating attraction to real people. Obviously, biology plays a major role in this, but I was lucky enough to have not discovered porn until I was a bit older (and, being the age I am, the internet porn I was viewing was at the time was strictly pictures; not healthy, but considerably less destructive, I would argue). Speaking of which, I realized a classic sign of addiction in my eventual approach to porn; bargaining. I would only look occasionally (didn’t work). I would only look at softcore (didn’t work). I would only look at naked pictures (didn’t work). I would only look with my girlfriend (didn’t work). I am addicted to porn. It bares repeating, because I have a habit of “conveniently” forgetting. And I don’t want to relapse anymore.
     
  15. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Day 9. I was on Facebook last night and saw a girl I went to grammar school with (who, no disrespect to her, is not particularly attractive) and it was still enough to trigger me to want to view porn. Thankfully, I had the willpower and presence of mind to resist the urge. It occurred to me this morning that if the goal is to rid oneself of temptation to porn, the only long term solution is to quit. I am addicted to porn; viewing it won’t make the temptation go away any more than scratching poison ivy will relieve the itching.
     
  16. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Day 10. The rubber is meeting the road quicker than usual this time; while I usually experience an initial period of indifference to porn when I start a new quitting streak, I’m finding myself having some urges. I’m also feeling a lot of anxiety and partner dissatisfaction. I’m unsure whether the partner dissatisfaction is withdrawal-induced, but the timing of it suggests that it is. The truth is that I have a sexual addiction. I don’t know that I’ve ever been able to fully admit prior to this moment. While the most recent manifestation of this addiction has been the uncontrollable urge to use porn (hence NoFap), I have exhibited other addictive behaviors in the past. Prior to being in a relationship, I abstained from porn for well over four years. And it wasn’t very hard. Why? Because I was using real people to fantasize about, and/or be sexual with. Once I got a girlfriend, I found myself drawn right back to porn (I am adamantly opposed to cheating). The common denominator between porn and promiscuity is that both can be weaponized against intimacy, something I have never been too comfortable with. Luckily, I have a very understanding partner who I can be honest with.
     
  17. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Day 11. Keeping the streak alive. The level of partner dissatisfaction reached a really high level yesterday, finding myself obsessing over whether my girlfriend was adequate. It seems that my addiction is like a body of water; contain it, and it always looks for a way out. Normally, porn/masturbation is where I would spring a leak, but now that I am focused on eliminating that habit, my addiction has started exploring other avenues of escape. Cheating is absolutely not an option in my mind, and so my brain has begun subconsciously making a case for being single. I need to remember that addictions can be extremely powerful, and have access to all the intellectual resources that “I” (as I think of myself as a separate entity) have at my disposal. Addictions also seem to have a goal. In the 12 step world, there is the lingo of “my disease wants me alone and miserable”. I feel like the same might apply here.
     
  18. HellComestoFrogtown

    HellComestoFrogtown Fapstronaut

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    Day 12. I’m feeling good today, which is strange considering how utterly horrible yesterday was. My girlfriend and I both had an awful day, and the terrible, negative thoughts I had disparaging her were out of control. Today, I feel like myself again, and all is well. I really think the withdrawals are getting to me in a major way. Fortunately, this is all encouraging me to just keep my streak going.
     

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