I quit

Never quit man ! Fuck that soft voice telling you it'll be ok. You have to channel all that anger you have into being someone better, if you're not happy about your life, you have to start the change. The hardest part is the start, the rest comes gradually. I know it's not easy, I've failed hundreds of times and I'm still failing.

 

This has helped me in my darkest of hours.

 

I can relate to the posters here, and there is a lot of good positive support. 27 is a tough age, in a few years you could be a lot better off. Replacing bad habits with good ones helps; getting off the screens for extended periods. Limiting internet access to the library or getting one of the net monitoring programs. There are a lot of ministries out there with 800 numbers and those who will pray for you if you send them emails on what you are going through.

I'd count all your blessings. Worse would be homeless, no money, at the mercy of homeless shelters and requirements there. Things can always get worse or better based on your actions.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I'm curious, would you mind sharing what those withdrawal symptoms were like from days 10-30? I'm at day 13 right now (of my streak, actually a few days longer since actually starting this), and I have experienced what I believe to be withdrawal symptoms. Including:

Uncharacteristic irritability/anger (specifically when gaming, and directed at my friends as well as physical objects around me)

Flashbacks (extremely clear, vivid mental imagery from porn I have seen in the past, as well as from real experiences with women I've had)

Feelings of despair/depression, feeling "nothing" (This has been going on for the past 3-4 years at least, some days better than others. There seems to be a daily cycle that I go through. Without fail it is worse in the mornings when I first wake up, and seems to get better as the day goes on. At night is when I feel my absolute best. Perhaps coincidentally, the mornings are when I would usually engage in PMO.)

Some nausea (I only noticed this on a one or two days and it was slight, could be completely unrelated)

Disturbed/poor sleep (This has been going on for some time now, and I have no way of knowing if it's related to this or not. But basically I feel like shit when I wake up, like it would be so easy to just continue sleeping, even though I seem to toss and turn a lot through the night. I feel more tired when I wake up after 8 hours of sleep than when I go to bed at the beginning of the night, it's very strange. I've had two sleep studies and no substantial sleep disorders have been found (though I did apparently have 25 arousals per hour which is about 8-9 higher than it should be for someone my age, though the doc was seemingly unconcerned with this.))

If these are in fact withdrawal symptoms then I would not describe this period as "hell on earth", for me anyways. Perhaps that's because the past 3-4 years has been hell on earth, and so this doesn't really seem much different in that respect. The biggest things I've noticed are the irritability/anger and flashbacks. Otherwise my days are proceeding pretty much as they have been. Though I will say in the past two weeks I've had more "good" days than I have in the past year.

 

Same symptoms, though I had most of them to some degree before starting but during that day 10-30 period they were multiplied by 100.

Prior to that I always felt pretty miserable and unfulfilled but PMO numbed me to most of it so I didn't even notice, or care tbh. During those withdrawals the sheer despair had me feeling borderline suicidal and I lost a lot of weight because I was sick with stress and anxiety. My sleep before then wasn't good but my sleep during this period was pretty much non-existent, once out of it though it did improve to a level better than ever before so like most things on nofap they tend to get worse before they get better.

Whilst it's good that you've read up on all of this I don't think you should get too in your head about it as you may end up convincing yourself that you're feeling a certain way when you may actually not be. When I went through these withdrawals I didn't even know they were a "thing", it wasn't until afterwards that I found others reporting similar. It's good that you're experiencing better days already, I didn't feel that but it doesn't work the same for everyone. I did feel better physically though, maybe it will just take a lot more time to feel healthier mentally in my case. I can't expect the effects of 12+ years of extreme edging to correct themselves in a couple of months.

 

Starting out I was able to get a streak of around 50 days before relapsing. After that I got shorter and shorter streaks which has settled at around 1-3 weeks. But on the first long streak I don't go into flatline. I think I was probably about to go into it when I relapsed. Now I go into flatline after a week or two. Maybe because I haven't flooded my brain with dopamine with truly habitual porn use in a long time, whereas with the 50 day streak I was coming right out of habitual use. I have no idea how bad my flatline will get because I've never stuck with a streak for more than a week into flatline.

 

Good point, if you use 1 or 2 times a month it has low effect on your life, but with this much use, you will see crazy differences in your life if you can just keep putting one foot in front of another.

 

You are your savior, you know what’s best for you. If something has ruined you so much, it itself shows that it is time to end it. Please remember that success is not winning, success is not giving up. Do learn from failures, you may not be able to eliminate your mistakes all at once, but I’m sure you’ll see progress.
PMO has deep rooted causes, for most of us it has made its way to our subconscious. Hence, the level of difficulty keeps rising as you keep giving in.
Find those deep rooted causes. Work on yourself. Trust me, if you are truly satisfied with you and your life, it will be so much easier to say NO to such negativity. So it’s a request, do sit and think about things you want to change, things you want to achieve, things that make you happy and slowly move towards these things. I can promise when you do so, you will automatically move away from this demon.
All the best. You are very strong as, you have realized what it is doing to you and that it has to stop. You have already taken the first few steps dear, now it’s time for you to take few more and then a few more, few steps at a time will take you to heights you wouldn’t have imagined.
Don’t see the end already, see the process. The confidence you will feel when you have overcome urges, the willpower you will slowly gain by not giving in, the happiness of evolving, the willingness to improve other aspects of life. Enjoy every aspect of this journey, it is not as dark as it seems to be, I am also doing the same.
You are strong and you’ve got this, good luck

 

You lose a lot in life if you skip reading the below

The Law of Wasted Efforts


Lions only succeed in a quarter of their hunting attempts.

They fail in 75% of their attempts and succeed in only 25%.


Despite this small percentage shared by most predators,

They don't despair in their pursuit in hunting attempts.


The main reason for this is not their hunger,

But it is their understanding of the “Law of Wasted Efforts”,

That has been instinctively built into animals,

A law by which nature is governed.


Half of the eggs of fish are eaten.

Half of the baby bears die before puberty.

Most of the world's rains fall in oceans.

Most of the seeds of trees are eaten by birds.


Scientists have found that:

Animals, Trees & other forces of nature are more receptive to the

“law of wasted efforts".


Only humans think that the lack of success in a few attempts is failure.

But the truth is that:

we only fail when we "stop trying".


Success is not to have a life free of pitfalls and failures.

Success is to walk over your mistakes.

Success is to go beyond every stage where your efforts were wasted.

Success is to look forward to the next stage.


If there is a word that summarizes this world,

It will simply be:

"continue all over again".

 

I' ve been in the same boat, so I know how it feels. You're free to live your life the way you want to live it, but I feel like you can be saved. There is just that weird feeling I get. By the way, for good 6 months I also was struggling with getting a proper streak. So don't worry. I believe that after this so called hell you will become way stronger.

 

No matter who is there or not there in our lives warrior, you are the most important person in your life. You spend the most time with one person in your life, and that is yourself. Why not make that pleasurable? Make your own company pleasurable

 

I feel you, I'm in exactly the same position. After a few days you think that things will never change or get better anyway so you relapse, I've been stuck in that cycle for a while now. Do you workout or do any kind of exercise? I used to lift 2-3 times a week but then went through a phase of doing nothing at all which definitely led to me feeling at my lowest/weakest. I've recently got back into it and have ramped it up to every day, it's probably not the most efficient way to build a better body but that's kind of secondary to why I'm doing it. They say that working out is good because it's a distraction and gives you something to aim for, which I think is partially true but that only takes an hour or so out of your day so it's still not really enough in that sense. What I'm finding myself though is that it's leading to a stronger resolve, a few times when I've felt the urge to relapse I've been able to say no and get past it, rewind a couple of weeks and I 100% would have just given in. I'm only at about 12 days right now but that's longer than I've managed in months so I definitely think it's helping me at least.