It's 2:30 AM where I live and I really can't sleep I've relapsed this night ... again. I've been fighting my porn addiction for almost 3 years now. Lots of ups and downs. I'm feeling pretty down right now. It's my first time posting on this site so I must make some kind of presentation, I'm a 21 y.o man who's been fighting against his addiction since he's 18 and suffering from it since 13. I was involved in the pornfree and nofap community of reddit but ended deleting my accounts because I ended on NSFW subreddits more than anything and it basically made the task of fighting the urges a lot harder. I've tried a lot of things during those last 3 years and learned a lot but I never was able to make it out of more than 2 months. Now I'm here, I've created this account a month ago and didn't post because in a way the porn addiction feels as much or even more shameful as porn consumption itself which is something I struggle a lot with. I hope this community can help me find solutions to my issues in a way that others weren't able to. I know the danger and consequences of porn addiction by heart now but I still ends up listening to the liar in my head. I know he's lying but he always ends up winning anyway. Previously I had a 22 days streak which felt pretty easy and then I remember having a little bit of anxiety and thinking '' you see stoping porn doesn't change anything'' and ended up relapsing. I also had a approximatively 10 days streak because I has to prepare for some exams and ended up relapsing to ''reward'' myself. I should've known those thoughts were lies but I only realise afterwards like I was a completely different person when I'm watching porn. Anxiety skyrocketed after the 22 days relapse and the 10 days relapse didn't feel like a ''reward'' at all. I don't really know where to go from here, I have some books on porn addictions and seduction but never dared reading them because it makes me feel pretty anxious and I really don't understand the cause or the solution of that problem. I feel like I should've all the tools to get out of it relatively easily but just can't do it for reasons that are still unknown. I'm not sure of what I was trying to achieve writing this post. I guess I'm seeking for help ... again ... to get back up ... again. Because I suppose there is no other choice anyway as I don't want my life to carry on as it is. I hope this didn't end up being a nonsensical ramblings like I feared it would. Thanks for giving me your time and reading. (sorry if bad and/or weird english as it is not my native language)
Well you are obviously intelligent based on how you write. Smarts isn’t enough to uproot the porn habit though. You need something else for that. The general prescription for new comers is to focus on getting the rest of your life in order. What do you want your life to look like? What do you want to change? If you could flip a switch and make it so the cravings for porn never came back, how would you be using your time? Some people do the hard 90. Others of us tapper off. Could be everyone does some combination of both as the first 90 days are hard no matter when you start or how often you were looking before you first string them together. A journal thread helps. Regular exercise helps. Building out your social circles help. Discovering your purpose and really getting after it helps a lot. Exactly when and how you break the cycle is up to you.
> Well first thanks for your reply and sorry to have taken around 2 days to answer to you. I really do appreciate the compliments and advice you just gave to me. I started with 90 days NoFap hard mode streak in the very beggining but I believe it did more harm than good as I was never able to make it out of first 2 weeks and the relapses were extremely devastating and demotivating. So I'm following a lighter path now that was able to make me go almost 70 days without looking at porn and I was pretty proud of that as I was actually getting awarded with great benefits such as increased confidence and reduced anxiety but then the pandemic came and I relapsed and wasn't really able to make it to the same level of sucess to this very day. I struggle heavily with every forms of discpline from writing a journal, studying and having regular exercice, I might be suffering from a form of ADHD of something like that even though I was never diagnosed I do have some of the main symptoms and a lot of focus / concentration issues and I believe those issues are leading me to lacking disciplines and of course relapsing. I did make a lot of progress in all of those aspects during my longest streak though especially in sociability and that's why I want to continue and why I created this account in the first place. To answer in your questions directly. The main things I would like to change in my life would be first to get more disciplined and use my time in a better way because procrastination and losing time is scary. We don't have an unlimited amount of time on this earth and whether you think there is something after or not I believe the goal is to use that time to its more efficient and pleasing way and not doing nothing, staying at home watching crap on tv or scrolling on random sites, watching unfunny memes. The second and certainly main thing I would like to work on is the general feeling of shame I have doing things. I think I was explained a bit about it in my first message but being ashamed of your porn addiction is pretty normal I would say because you get warned about the danger of this stuff and still end up failling back into it many times but it's not healthy to be ashamed because when you feel like crap you can't really work on yourself to become a better person, right ? But then I have another issue that I don't even consider to be normal is that I'm ashamed of also fighting my addiction instead of being happy or proud about it. You see in a way I often feel the same shame after watching porn than I do writing a message like this one, waking up yesterday I remember thinking ''I really wrote all that crap on the internet !?'' and I was a little bit upset about it because I feel like I should be proud of actually doing things to fight addiction instead of using the same stupid methods that failed for almost 2 years now. That's why I'm writing this I suppose, I'm searching for tools or methods to work on those two sides of my personality I would really like to change for the better. Again, thanks for the answer and for the help.
