200+ days and finally conquered porn

1. My journey

Currently 26M. Started PMO when I was 13. Had been addicted, PMO on average every 2-3 days for over a decade since then. My best streak for a long time was 35 days when I was 17 - I earned that here on NoFap, and have been on and off the site many times. This remained an unbroken record and I was deep in addiction, relapsing daily until...

My 26th birthday. I realised that porn addiction had taken up literally half my life and was fed up. I made a vow to myself I would never watch porn or view any inappropriate material willingly again. That's it. Cold turkey. And it worked (sort of). I went from about 7 consecutive days of fapping to 120+ days clean in one go. After a few months I found myself really depressed and fell back into a relapse. But the amazing thing - I watched porn once, but refused to go back to old habits. The next day I started clean again, and have been around 220+ days clean now. There's one more achievement though.

Just last week I once again fell into a really deep rut - lots of things going wrong in my life and I found myself turning back to porn again. It turned from a passing thought, to imagining myself doing it, to planning when I would be alone, to a determination. I set up time for an evening alone, had my laptop charged and even charged up my VR headset in preparation (you know, I hadn't seen porn in so long I was craving to try everything again). So literally at any other point in my life there was no coming back from this. But I sat in bed and reflected - do I really want to go back to that life again? And I sat for 8 hours straight. With my head in my hands, wasting time watching youtube, playing games, back to staring at the wall. All to try to convince myself that the joy of watching porn again would be worth it. But I couldn't, because deep down I knew how impossibly difficult it was to escape the first time, and there was no logical reason to ever jump down there again. So against all odds, I decided to save myself. And a week later, after surviving the worst possible form of temptation and complete freedom to indulge - I can finally say I have beat this addiction for life.

2. My learnings

I'm going to try to list the key points and keep things short so I don't ramble. But feel free to ask in the comments and I'll expand on any of these.

How it felt after X days:

1. Days 1-7 - Extremely hard. Took pure willpower to stop myself. You just have to force yourself through this, no mercy. Nothing will help if you've been addicted enough.
2. Days 7-20 (approx) - Relatively easy. Your body has gotten over the physical and hormonal shock, but the psychological impact hasn't kicked in yet. Most important thing is to keep your mind busy so you don't go back in out of pure boredom.
3. Days 20-30 (approx) - Very hard again. Now I really started to "miss" porn and felt a strong emotional craving for the experience. Lots of imagining the old scenes I used to watch (you can still remember them in HD in your mind). Here you have to discipline yourself again. Absolutely make sure you are keeping busy, but also put blockers in for internet access, book time away from home, with family etc so you are not alone. Emotional reasoning is not enough here.
4. Days 30-90 - Fairly easy with some bursts of difficulty. Overall I thought about PMO less and less, and small urges became easier to dismiss from the mind before they settled. Put simply, PMO just seems to fade into the background and doesn't seem important in life. Throughout this there will be small repeated waves like stage 3, which are intense but get progressively weaker. Luckily you will have increasingly longer warning cues that you're entering these, so can prepare to discipline yourself.
5. Days 90+ - The long, easy road. At this point the PMO recovery effort runs itself. Crucially, I think 3 months is the point at which it finally takes more effort to convince yourself TO fap, than it takes to avoid it when an urge comes. Take my 220 day crisis above: On day 1 I would spend a whole afternoon wasting time and deliberating to try to convince myself not to fap that night. On day 220, I spent an whole afternoon to actually try to justify fapping, but I still couldn't. Another thing - as time goes on the images of porn that were burned into your eyeballs finally start to fade, so you can't even remember or imagine properly the scenes you used to watch. And that's really powerful, because it's like you're truly PMO free, and even your dreams become clean.

What approaches had the most impact for me (in order of impact top to bottom)

1. Cold turkey with a meaningful emotional promise to yourself. I can't stress this enough - if you want porn out of your life, you have to come to terms with the decision to NEVER see a naked person again outside of real relationships. You need to promise to yourself, because only you will be by your side for the whole duration of this journey, and only you will be able to stop yourself when you're in a room debating whether to go back to hell. And make the promise at a pivotal moment in your life, cry a lot and make a big emotional deal out if it. This helps you remember how much you struggled to achieve freedom in future, which can be all that protects you at some point. Also note, you do not and should not track days - it goes against the whole mentality of this being for life - days do not matter.
2. A replacement sexual outlet. For me, I'm still about 1-2 years away from realistically getting married and being able to have sex physically. There is no way to overcome that so I crucially decided to allow myself to MO, but without porn. This has saved me on so many occasions, as a last line of defence. Basically you set the rule that if you ever break down every barrier and fully commit to porn again, you have to MO first without porn. Then what happens is that the post-nut hormone change makes you see sense and not want to PMO immediately after. And I believe it was ok - I believe porn is the real issue, not masturbation. I still masturbate approximately every 4-5 days. Interestingly, though I didn't police it, I was first MO'ing to porn scenes I still remembered and visualised well in my head. But after a while I couldn't remember them clearly, and I now MO to either just the physical stimulation or fantasising about healthy, real relationships and love. So trust me, allow yourself to MO at least and any problem you anticipate will fix itself.
3. PMO-antagonist habits. These are the things where I noticed from back in my porn days - the more I PMO - the less I am able to maintain these habits. Like an inverse relationship. For me the strongest were prayers, and exercise. I realised over the years that on any day or the day after I PMO'd, I usually did not complete my prayers, nor exercise. So the solution here in the porn-free life - don't just focus on general health and habit development, but make these antagonist habits your absolute top priority. I made tracking prayers and exercise my number 1 priority, and did everything I could to keep a streak going with these, even if every other healthy habit was going down the drain. And yes, it worked - the stronger I was with these habits, the less I was tempted by porn, and as soon as I started missing prayers or exercise, porn started to tempt me again.
4. Don't work in your bedroom. The top 3 are much much more important than anything else, and this is only valid for days 1-30 when you need discipline. It's not about preventing yourself from ever being alone, but I know that if I was alone with my laptop in my room every day for several hours in the evening it would be a lot harder. After a month or so it doesn't matter so much but I'd still recommend it (and still have not worked in my bedroom since).
5. Note this means that other interventions are actually less important in the long run. Yes, porn blockers, not allowing yourself to be alone, taking up a hobby, eating well, accountability partners, even posting on forums etc. These can be useful for others, but I don't think these were critical or helpful for me.

"Superpowers" - positive impacts on my life. Again in order of impact

1. Psychological wellbeing. I finally could sleep each night without guilt of doing something wrong (even if you are not religious, does it feel morally right to spend time ogling another human's private body, or support an exploitative industry). This is by far the best impact in the long run and makes life undescribably sweeter. To know that if I died at an time right now, and I can say with confidence that I have not been committing any sin - I am clean inside - is liberating.
2. Respect for women. I have always been naturally confident around women so didn't really see an improvement in confidence. But I do feel now that I speak to them with much more maturity and respect, and don't even look or think about them in any bad way by default. And somehow women can sense that - so they have become much more trusting of me and want to be around me. Note I am not even try to date anyone or have a relationship until I am ready for marriage (so actually sometimes I feel like this is a bad thing for me) - but the fact that I'm still seeing this effect despite trying to avoid it proves it is quite powerful and indeed a true "superpower".
3. Deeper, thicker voice. Yes, I don't know how or whether there is scientific evidence for this (or if it's just me getting older), but definitely my voice has changed. In a good, manly way.
4. Note "superpowers" I didn't experience:
   1. Better/stronger erections or morning wood. Nope, libido is the same, I just outlet by MO regularly rather than PMO.
   2. Less sensitivity to porn. I can still get horny much faster with porn - that never changes.
   3. General confidence or happiness. Sometimes I still feel absolutely miserable.
   4. Better physical fitness or health.
   5. Better life situation. Nope, I actually lost my job and fell into a lot of debt. Sorry, life is still tough no matter what you do.
   6. Able to find a loving partner. Nope - hasn't made me any more ready or closer to finding a woman.
   7. Hair growth or muscles. Nope, I wish.

I don't know if this is well written or particularly applicable or helpful to the majority. But thankfully I've finally found myself at a point I never thought I could reach - to be one of those monk-wizards that have actually seen the light at the other end of the tunnel - and it's beautiful.

 

Thank you!

Without a sexual partner - not really. After all I am human - I am a young man with hormones and there needs to be an outlet. I could wait for wet dreams but a) I prefer not having to clean the sheets all the time and b) The day or 2 before I finally get the wet dream I get so worked up by my hormones that there is a huge risk of jumping to porn. Not worth the risk - MO is safer.

After I get married - I hope I won't feel the need to MO. But I have no experience there so bit of a mystery to me and the same question ran through my mind. Keen to hear from any married people here what the situation is.

Either way - no porn!

 

Thanks man, very wise advice and I'll try not to be complacent. And wow, your 14 years will keep me inspired for a long time!