I quit

Look at Ben Lionel Scott channel on YouTube, very helpfull when you are discourage.

 

Not only can you become normal again, you can become better than you were before. Masculine vigour and unshakeable awareness are two of the many traits available to you at the price of discipline and commitment. Abstaining from PMO is your current goal, and it should be. However a large number of us fall for the illusion of making this our main focus. What I am saying is that while you are living all of the negative effects of excessive PMO right now, you have to remember that the real goal is to transform your life.

A large number of individuals seem to focus on their day counter, aiming for 30, 90 or 180 days. The problem is that when you relapse, you lose the momentum of your streak. You return to the 'start', beating yourself up on the way down while feeling as though you have achieved nothing. When you eventually get past the 30 day threshold, you begin worrying about having morning wood, or when your brainfog will disappear, or if the urges will ever stop attacking you. You try to abstain for as long as possible hoping that one morning you will 'arise' a new man. This is the wrong mindset to have.

The truth of the matter is; each of us used porn to escape our emotions. Whether you are depressed, lonely, bored, hurt or all of the above, porn allowed you to evade painful thoughts and emotions without having to face them head on. Porn was your coping mechanism. Your dirty little habit. Your escape from reality. With that being said, the end game, the bigger picture, needs to be about learning how to live. The energy that you gain from abstinence, start putting it into learning how to live the life that you truly want. Focus on gradually building the life that you want, so that you can quit porn for good, not the other way around. I know it doesn't sound easy, but it is absolutely possible and can be done. I have seen it numerous times.

Start thinking about how you want to live your life. Do you want to start a business? Do you want to travel? Do you want to get back to sports? Do you want to get married and start a family? These are all options that are available to you, doors that can be opened to you if you only apply yourself. Treat these visions with the upmost urgency and respect. Understand that you are in charge and decide what happens in your life. Set the pace of your life so that others can see exactly how it is done.

 

Hey bro I get it, you're a loser. But you don't have to be one tomorrow. Or the next day. You don't HAVE TO SUCK. I get it for real I'm not being mean I get it. But bro you don't have to be this way.

You have to believe in that part that says it's gonna be okay

 

Do what is best for your life man. Dont give up and dont give in.

 

Consider reading the Porn Circuit. It's about how pornography rewires portions of our brains. Why can you be living out your life and see a photo of a girl and instantly think about OMGIMTRIGGEREDIGOTTAHAVEIT. It's because your brain is missing a barrier it needs. But you can rewire it. You can rewire the circuit board of your brain. You need to get a content blocker you can use me as an ally if you want. But you can start today

 

Kindly watch it

 

Hey,

I know the feeling of failure, it's difficult to go through it on your own, if not impossible. Everyone needs support networks to succeed and be happy, to live a healthy life. No person can be successful without others around them.

I would HIGHLY recommend that you get an accountability partner, it has made my journey 100 times easier. I have still failed, but with somone supporting me I was able to come back stronger and learned from my mistakes.

If you don't want that, any community where you can have regular contact with at least one person that supports you non-judgementally. There are places out there.

Once again, finding an accountability partner that you can talk about your problems with daily helps a great amount.

 

Stay this way. You can't spend the rest of your life with watching P and doing M. You know this will ruin you and you can't live with this . Suicide is easier than fighting... You were born to fight and stand out. Start and don't give up. You're still young, stay in fight to improve your life in every way.

 

Hey Saiyan Warrior, (Like your name, I will soon be Super Saiyan 3)
You have got totally the right attitude, you are not just doing it for yourself (Although that is important), you know what a massive difference you will have on everyone elses lives.
Getting out of "self" can be hard, I know because for me, I have always leads a very self-centred and blinkered life, not caring about anyone else.
It takes a spiritual transformation to get away from this mindset, and sometimes pain can be the catalyst for this change.

 

Hey man. I can relate a lot with what you have said here. I am in my early thirties and started using porn sometime in my teens. In my own view I don't feel like I have escalated all that much over the years; I prefer to view a very specific genre and it's pretty vanilla stuff I think, but I definitely have viewed many different women (the novelty aspect), so I don't think it much matters.

I feel the same way. I kid you not, the only things in life that bring me any kind of joy/pleasure are video games (with my friends), and playing my guitar. Outside of that I have no interest in exercise, being outdoors, socializing, dating, or even women or sex in general (outside of PMO). I feel like I'm stuck in a dead-end job and have no energy to do anything about it. I wake up each morning feeling like shit; like I have this massive brain fog and haven't even slept at all (even after sleeping 8+ hours). It would be so easy to lay in bed all day long and I feel like I could probably sleep most of that time as well if I wanted to.

So to summarize, I feel like shit. At first I thought it was allergies, then a sleep disorder, and now I'm thinking it might be porn. The dopamine desensitization and whatnot would certainly explain things. I started my journey roughly two weeks ago and faltered a couple times at the beginning but I'm on day 12 now going strong.

For me the things that have helped are getting rid of as many triggers as possible (like saved porn bookmarks and deleting social media and reddit from my phone), and also identifying other triggers that I was previously unaware of. Each time I faltered I journaled what happened and why I thought it did. This practice helped me to identify more triggers. For example, if I engage in PMO it's typically in the morning right after I wake up. I usually reach over and grab my phone and go at it. Knowing this I've made a rule that I do not bring my phone into bed with me. It stays on my desk which is a good 6' or so away from my bed. Yes, I could still get up and walk to it but this additional step requires me to more consciously violate my own rules for myself, and it's been very effective at helping me to fight urges.

There's a ton of good information in your thread here. You have to start replacing PMO with something else. Start taking walks outside, do some kind of light exercise (something you can tolerate), try to learn a new instrument, take a cold shower. Cold showers do wonders for me. They drastically improve my mood and can jolt me out of negative thought patterns, and the effects tend to last for a long time afterwards. I love starting my day with a warm shower, but before getting out I make it as cold as it will go and during this time I say things out loud like "I love myself" and "I forgive myself"; just some personal affirmations. It may sound stupid but it is really profound.

Finally, I really think you should talk to someone who has experience working with people dealing with these kinds of problems. I stumbled across Noah Church's website and have corresponded with him only briefly, but I plan on doing a session with him sometime in the near future. Fun fact, he also narrated Your Brain on Porn, which is a book you absolutely MUST read if you haven't already. The best way you can get through this is to arm yourself with information and understanding. You have to get to the point where the pain you experience from PMO is more significant than the extremely temporary pleasure. It is easier to do this when you are more educated and more fully understand the incredibly harmful effects of PMO on a biological/psychological level.

 

Hey man. I can relate a lot with what you have said here. I am in my early thirties and started using porn sometime in my teens. In my own view I don't feel like I have escalated all that much over the years; I prefer to view a very specific genre and it's pretty vanilla stuff I think, but I definitely have viewed many different women (the novelty aspect), so I don't think it much matters.

I feel the same way. I kid you not, the only things in life that bring me any kind of joy/pleasure are video games (with my friends), and playing my guitar. Outside of that I have no interest in exercise, being outdoors, socializing, dating, or even women or sex in general (outside of PMO). I feel like I'm stuck in a dead-end job and have no energy to do anything about it. I wake up each morning feeling like shit; like I have this massive brain fog and haven't even slept at all (even after sleeping 8+ hours). It would be so easy to lay in bed all day long and I feel like I could probably sleep most of that time as well if I wanted to.

So to summarize, I feel like shit. At first I thought it was allergies, then a sleep disorder, and now I'm thinking it might be porn. The dopamine desensitization and whatnot would certainly explain things. I started my journey roughly two weeks ago and faltered a couple times at the beginning but I'm on day 12 now going strong.

For me the things that have helped are getting rid of as many triggers as possible (like saved porn bookmarks and deleting social media and reddit from my phone), and also identifying other triggers that I was previously unaware of. Each time I faltered I journaled what happened and why I thought it did. This practice helped me to identify more triggers. For example, if I engage in PMO it's typically in the morning right after I wake up. I usually reach over and grab my phone and go at it. Knowing this I've made a rule that I do not bring my phone into bed with me. It stays on my desk which is a good 6' or so away from my bed. Yes, I could still get up and walk to it but this additional step requires me to more consciously violate the rules I've set for myself, and it's been very effective at helping me to fight urges.

There's a ton of good information in your thread here. You have to start replacing PMO with something else. Start taking walks outside, do some kind of light exercise (something you can tolerate), try to learn a new instrument, take a cold shower. Cold showers do wonders for me. They drastically improve my mood and can jolt me out of negative thought patterns, and the effects tend to last for a long time afterwards. I love starting my day with a warm shower, but before getting out I make it as cold as it will go and during this time I say things out loud like "I love myself" and "I forgive myself"; just some personal affirmations. It may sound stupid but it is really profound.

Finally, I really think you should talk to someone who has experience working with people dealing with these kinds of problems. I stumbled across Noah Church's website and have corresponded with him only briefly, but I plan on doing a session with him sometime in the near future. Fun fact, he also narrated Your Brain on Porn, which is a book you absolutely MUST read if you haven't already.

The best way to through this is to arm yourself with knowledge and understanding. You have to get to the point where the pain you experience from PMO is more significant than the temporary pleasure you get from it. It is easier to do this when you are more educated and more fully understand the incredibly harmful effects of PMO on a biological/psychological level. Each time you experience an urge, learn to associate that urge with all of your symptoms, your problems. As time goes it will become easier to resist because you will start to develop a new relationship with porn and attitudes toward it.

Remember that as porn addicts we suffer from hypofrontality meaning that things like reasoning and decision-making are impaired. We have to overcompensate for these deficits at first, and for me it has greatly helped to educate myself and to consciously connect my urges and PMO use to my own negative symptoms and problems.

One more thing. Personally I think it's a bit of a mistake to get caught up in the "streak". There may be something to it in terms of recovery but I would suggest not getting too caught up in your streak right now (this comes from Noah Church by the way). Instead, view your progress more generally. Buy a calendar and hang it on your wall. Mark each day that you abstain from PMO and/or each day that you falter. Do it again next month. Compare. Did you do better or worse? Why? If you used PMO even only one day less the following month that's movement in the right direction. Think you can do one day better next month?

You have to take a more macro approach to this. I think the long-term view is very difficult for us because of our decreased ability to delay gratification. But, progress is not linear and this is going to be a journey over several weeks and months, maybe even years. Stop beating yourself up so much for not being able to surpass whatever number of days. Get that out of your head and just keep trying.

Back in January I had a good day. In fact it wasn't a good day, it was a fucking incredible day. The world was bright, colors were vivid, I was happy. I was at work and walking around with a smile on my face with so much energy. I thought that I was high on something, I was in a state of euphoria. I didn't even know it was possible to feel this way. Since then I have experienced a handful of other good days, and in fact, I've experienced most of them in the past two weeks since starting my journey. That makes me feel confident that the two are related (my symptoms and PMO use). I feel like I've been given a sneak peek at what life can be like after recovering, and I hold onto that feeling. If it's possible to feel good again, and based upon hundreds of personal anecdotes - it is, then trust me - it will be worth it.

 

At least your 27, you still have 2/3 of your life rest to live, make changes now and there's no limit on what you can become

 

Bro just keep going. Over time more good days appear. Some days you will feel detached and terrible about yourself, but some days you will feel like a king destined for greatness. Keep going, we're all in this together.

 

There is light at the end of the tunnel. Embrace this struggle, you can get through this. And you will be so incredibly strong when you come out on the other side. Educate yourself and get connected either with a coach/mentor, the community (here or elsewhere), and/or someone else going through the same stuff you are.

Just think. You struggle to go 3 days without porn. 3 days! Can you imagine what you have to gain? Think about all the problems you're suffering from. How many of them might be alleviated if you can get this under control? To me I almost look at this as a POSITIVE thing because it says to me you have so much to gain by going through the process of recovery. Let that motivate you and push your forward.

 

I can relate to basically all of this, though I even lost interest in my friends a long time ago so have no one now.

My porn use also never escalated, in fact a lot of what I used wouldn't even be classed as porn to the normal person, it's just the extreme quantity of it and novelty(as you said) that I think really screwed me up. I don't think the content matters all that much, it's the sheer volume that is the main problem.

I don't have much or any interest in the things you cited either, actually if I'm being honest a lot of those things actually scare me as I've pretty much just avoided all of it up to this point - the only one I do engage in is working out and running, not that I actually enjoy it, I just do it because ... well I don't know why really.

I'm a little further ahead of you in this journey but also behind as well, I know that sounds weird but I'll explain why.

I really started to try and quit this crap at about this time last year. Like you I failed a couple of times early on but quite quickly my streaks were building up. At the beginning of this year I managed to go 60+ days and in that time I did see some noticeable benefits. My natural libido came roaring back(though this was ultimately my downfall), my erections were 100%, morning wood back consistently, my sleep was much better and my energy levels shot up(probably as a result of the improved sleep but also because I hadn't been draining myself on the daily). I'm pretty confident that PMO is the cause of you feeling like shit all the time. I remember at the height of it I was so tired that I'd be constantly yawning from like 2pm onwards. My parents who are double my age would go to bed later than I would(often drinking as well, which isn't something I do), get up up earlier and yet they still had way more energy than I did, that's despite regular exercise, eating healthily etc. Physically I definitely felt better on this streak but mentally I don't recall much changing, but that's not to say it wouldn't have in time or that it won't in your case.

The reason I'm behind where you are now though is that since that streak I haven't been able to get back anywhere close to it since. I don't know what it is but I think the relapses since then actually hit me harder than when I was doing it all the time and now I feel way more addicted than I did back then, every day is a real struggle. Again, I can't project my experiences onto you but all I'll say is ride the wave you are on and don't look back, I don't want you to be here a year from now feeling like this has a far stronger hold over you than it does currently.

I should add though that I did go through extreme withdrawals from around day 10 to day 30. They were utter hell on Earth but you may not experience them with any luck, if you do then you've just got to get through them knowing that they're just part of the process.