100+ days and still getting urges?

Hello Dude,

I'm sad to say I've not yet got that far so I can't report first-hand experience. However, I can say it's not an uncommon thing to see reported. I was just reading a thread with a comment from a friend on the over-40s section who relapsed after over 150 days in.

What are you doing to "make progress mentally"? Have you changed much else in your life or are you just (a bloody amazing achievement in its self!) abstaining from PMO?

 

Thank you Dude.

 

You'll do it man! Stress is a major trigger for me. Meditation is helping me. A lot. Though it's something I have to stick at and I'm struggling with that.

 

Great post! Great questions! (also funny to see there's another Don in here)

I can speak to this directly. I went several years without any P (although I was denying my problem with checking out girls on Facebook compulsively) and the MO was down to less than once per year. You can read my journal if you want, but you don't need to. I am not a pro at this, and a lot of people have way more scientific knowledge about this topic than I do. What I can offer is my experience and opinions. Maybe that always goes without saying on the forums.

When I had a long track record of abstaining from P, it would still occasionally occur to me to seek it out, but for the most part I didn't think about it. There would be times when everyone I lived with was out of town, and I would come home and a thought would come to me like "you know what would be awesome, would be to hook my laptop up to that big screen tv and go totally crazy," but the thought was really fast and it was gone quickly. It wasn't even in complete sentences or words exactly, it was more like a fuzzy concept of "laptop, big-screen, porn," and then I moved on with whatever I was doing and it was gone. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, but it was like the thought had no claws anymore. It didn't excite me, and I didn't feel anything significant when it came. It was like watching a mosquito fly by, or seeing one and walking the other way. I could still hear it sometimes, but I was turned the other direction. I believe that many of the people on NoFap could get to that point, but I'm not sure what the path is for everyone else to get there.

Now, I'm going to try to put this in a way that is secular enough to work for anyone, but still includes the truth as I experienced it. I don't think any of us who are truly addicted can just resist forever successfully. We have to become different people, over time. In some ways, this is going to happen no matter what as we age and life circumstances teach us things and we are around different people and jobs, etc. So then the goal is to do it in a way that closes off the opportunities for addiction to P to present itself. (I also think it's better, when possible, to avoid temptation than to resist it.) So if you believe religiously, as I do, it comes to a point where we do everything we can come up with to get clean, and really aim to become the type of person that God wants us to be in other aspects of our lives as well, and then he changes our hearts. We keep working, pleading, and improving. The temptations may not go away, but I believe that for most, if not all of us, they will diminish. For the non-believers, the process is similar. Take that gap, mentally and temporally (the time we used to use on PMO), and start to fill it up with better things. Exercise is a popular one here, and it's really important, but if we're going to really become the type of people that A) think less about pornography, and B)don't give in to PMO when we do think about it, it will take more than individual self-improvement. We have to start doing things for other people that help us see their value more clearly, and really start to look at the things that make life worth living for a human.

Sorry if that's way too heavy or sounds condescending. I'm trying to figure this stuff out as I go, just like everyone else is. You've gone 193 days without pornography, and that's amazing! There are plenty of us who take that as a sign that it's really possible to make progress and not give in. Now it's time to try and become the type of person who doesn't even want pornography.
What can you do with your time that would be worthwhile and uplifting?
Are there people in your family or community that you could reach out to?
Are there other things in your life that are significant time-suckers, that you should give up?
Would you be willing to volunteer somewhere?
Do you have time for an art class at night?
Are there books you think you'd like to read?
Is fitness your thing?
Would you like to learn a language?
Do you want to restore a car or learn how to repair them?
Do you dream of writing a novel?
Is there a musical instrument you'd like to work at?

Obviously those are just ideas from my life, and yours may be totally different, but you can probably see where this is going.

I know that when I was feeling a lot better about myself and completely clean from P, I was making progress in other areas of my life. I think that subtly avoiding it may have something to do with getting the addiction in the first place. Improvement doesn't always happen quickly, but as you look for ways to get better, you'll find them. You've already got the discipline to do a really hard thing, so now move (even if it's slowly) toward things that make you better.

 

It's not uncommon at all. I relapsed after 278 days.

 

Urges are natural pal, The body wanting to have sex is perfectly normal and as long as your a fit healthy male you will always have this.

The trouble is many of us have rewired our brain To PMO rather than have sex.

With a girlfriend you have a way to divert your energies. without you will just have to keep training yourself to not to look at porn when horny.

 

I have heard that it takes two years for addiction to be completely reversed, but you will likely have desires as long as you are a human being, and that is healthy. I wouldn't encourage you to seek escape from desire - it is part of human nature and is healthy for us. We can direct our energy to other things, and when the desire is appropriate - like in a healthy, committed, intimate relationship - it can be fulfilled. But we will have to fight inordinate desires of every kind every day of our lives - to sleep too long, to eat too much, to drink too much, to not work as hard as we can, to be hurtful to others when we're in a bad mood, to be discouraged when bad things happen, to be unrealistic when good things happen. There is no magic fix for those tendencies - we rectify them by practicing goodness, and minimize their pull on our lives, and thus their effects on us and on others. Those struggles are part of our happiness in an imperfect world, and you are already a big winner in it - keep going and it will get better and better.

I'm afraid people get discouraged when they find out that they can't eliminate their tendency to evil altogether. We cannot change our weak nature - we just have to exercise every day so that we are always strong. We always have to learn to love the fight, and recognize what a great success the fight itself is, and never be satisfied with the success we already have.

 

I don't think there is a way around these natural human sex urges. I often wonder, what if we had no porn what so ever? When I was a 12 year old kid, my friend and I found some porno mags in the snow. This was just softcore, but I still remember that triggered me to be instantly aroused. Later got into porn, rather than going through this the natural,hard way right to the woman. This happens to everyone in our porn saturated society =(. Perhaps if you could try to train yourself that porn doesn't even exist, thus an actual woman is the only way for sex? It would possibly be very effective. Just imagine if we had no porn at all, heh probably you would be forced to have sex the right way .

 

Damn Im glad I got to read this post. So Awesome.

 

Yeah, I still get occasional urges, usually when I'm frequently ejaculating.

 

Its completely normal. Urges and sex energy is the most potent and basic desire in mankind. If you want to eradicate it completely you will need a very long time. For me, the average time for getting rid of any addiction (gaming, weed, ...) Has been 6 - 7 years or continuous effort with a "relapse" here and there (every 6-12 months). If your relapses are about this length of time you are on your way to full recovery. Also during hardship/ stress our mind tries to go back to "old" coping mechanisms so whats happening to you is NORMAL.

Good luck. Youve got this!