I feel terrible

Hi everyone.
I'll try to make this story as short as possible, but my situation is a but complicated.

I've been on porn since I was 12 yo (I'm 36 right now). When I was about 24 I was diagnosed with rare disease and I've been fighting it since then. During that time I went hard on porn, because most of my time I've stayed alone in my room in my bed. I've felt extremely lonely, deppressed, unworthy of anything. It started with normal porn and ended up with weird crap like swingers, trans woman and even gay porn. During that time I sometimes created accounts on some swinger or gay/trans community apps and talked to people there. The edgier the better. I've felt a dopamine rush each time I went there.

I've never had a sexual urge to a man or trans woman in real life. But this porn idea went into my mind so hard that sometimes I've got those ideas in my head that filled me with disgust to myself.

So about a two years ago I've stumbled on NoFap. I've read a lot, watched a lot of youtube videos and thought to myself that I'll give it a try. My first try was about 1 month. I've felt the benefits, it was great and then my disease got me pinned down to bed for a month. I've thought I have my urges under control, but a month alone in bed made me go back to edging. After few months I've finally realised that maybe I'm not watching porn but I'm damaging my dopamine system again.

In november 2020 I started nofap again. It went great, first weeks were very hard but after about a month or month and a half i've felt amazing. People liked me more, I started to exercise, my confidence skyrocketed I've met a lot of girls who wanted to know me better. Even my all time crush is hitting on me right now! It was all great until february. My disease kicked my butt again and I had stay alone in my apartment for 2 months.. I was good for 7 weeks. I've felt horrible but stayed strong. But in the 8th week and totally lost my control.. I've bought some weed to cure my nerves and chill a bit and I don't even know when or how I got back to my old habits. I've wen't to some sexcam and fantasied about edgy sex with some of the cammodels, used apps to sex chat but the worst part of all of this is that I've talked to an old female friend of my about all the edgy stuff. I've even convinced her that I had experimented with my sexuality (which I didn't lol). I wanted to feel her attraction to me, so I told her everything she wanted to hear. I was on a strange dopamine and pain (my disease was giving my really hard time for 2 months) high for over a week, but still I didnt(!) relapse.

Few days ago I was in pain again and finally I've relapsed while I was edging ( i wasn't watching porn just fantasy oriented thinking). On that moment I was hit by so much shame that it's hard for me to handle.

It went so good for me and I feel like trash again. The moment my disease is kicking in it's really stressful to me and it pushes me back to porn again. I have to beat this crap, but I feel really depressed right now.

The good thing is that I didn't wen't back to watching porn (I was glimpsing tho) or fapping. I was just using my imagination and trying to put other women attention to me in some bizarre way.

My plan is to quit using social apps, stop smoking weed, limit my alcohol usage and instead of sitting alone in my flat while i'm sick stay at my family place. I'm also thinking about going to a therapy to bust my chances to win this.

Thank You all for reading this. Although I feel horribly ashamed right now I'm not going to quit. To be honest I feel a lot better now, when I've shared this story with You.

Any words of encouragement are welcome.

 

Thanks a lot for replying. Good thing is that I don't feel any urges. I need to keep my guard, because when I feel that I'm in full control I'm starting to make mistakes.

 

Thanks a lot for this post. It helps a lot to know that you aren't alone. I've red some of your diary and I'm impressed by how hard are You trying. Maybe we can help each other out a little? If You wanna talk You can send me a pm. Maybe we can develop some strategy and beat this once and for all.