28yo heavy addict, fapping nearly lost me my dream girl

Hi guys (and gals). For years, I laughed at NoFap because I didn't believe there to be any scientific support behind it. But mostly because I was terrified of doing it. I've been heavily addicted to masturbation ever since I discovered it, which was back in elementary school. I had one magazine that had one tiny picture of a naked girl and I jerked off to that a gazillion times. I was probably like 10 back then...

Once I got a computer with internet in my room, things went downhill fast. That's when the true addiction started. Porn, hentai, erotica, girls from Facebook. I'd fap to anything, constantly, multiple times a day. I was young and impressionable and I soon developed lots and lots of fetishes, getting more and more extreme far before even turning 18. This never worried me. It made me happy, right? I wasn't hurting anyone. I turned to writing my own erotica, sometimes spending hours and hours just writing while jerking off, sometimes an entire day. I got addicted to the feeling of creating these erotic situations myself, being the director of my own porn scenes basically.

Now I'm 28 and I actually have a girlfriend of 3 years. I'm still heavily addicted to masturbation and still jerked off almost daily to either porn or writing my own stories. She didn't know. I'd sneak one in while she was showering or still sleeping. It affected my sex life to the point where sex with my GF felt like a chore and I'd much rather be downstairs watching porn on my computer. I often couldn't cum, blaming it on stress or something else but basically real sex bored me. She has no clue of all the sick stuff I'm into, thankfully. She might just break up with me.

I can still fix this, but I gotta do something. It got bad during the COVID lockdown. I was locked up with my GF and got less alone time to feed my addiction. I actually got so nervous, needing that rush so bad that I almost broke up with my perfect girlfriend just so I could be alone again and be a sad masturbating loser. I almost gave up a lifelong future with the girl I love so I could jerk off... All this never dawned on me because I was addicted.

A few weeks back, I just started a new diet (intermittent fasting) and it actually works. After eight years of food addiction I was finally getting more control over what I ate and I'm finally losing weight. This new feeling of control got me to look at other aspects of my life and made me finally notice my porn addiction and look into NoFap once more. The success stories are amazing and even though I'm still sceptical, I just want to see for myself if it'll work. I don't even care if it's a placebo effect, if it works it works!

So three days ago I watched my favorite porn video one last time (I hope) and had a good jerk and decided that'd be the last. So far I haven't fully relapsed, but it's hard. The craving is bad. Real bad. Right now I feel this really extreme urge to jerk off, which is why I went on here to write my story instead. I know I'm gonna relapse eventually, but that's okay. I'm just trying to keep it to a minimum. My first goal is sitting out the month, which is about two weeks from when I started. Then hopefully a month, then two and eventually the 90 days.

My brain keeps telling me how much I'm gonna miss. How much I loved watching porn and writing those stories, and I did! But it was messing up my life! I was calling off friends to stay in and write erotica. I was denying my girlfriend actual sex so I could watch porn. I was skipping work to stay in and play with my dick. I'm in a really shitty place in life. I'm depressed, have extreme anxiety, lost my job, overweight etc. I have nothing to lose here so I'm willing to give this my all. If it doesn't work, I'll just go back to being the sad fapping loser, but I want to see for myself first!

So yeah, I bet nobody read all that but it felt good writing it and it kept my hands above the desk for another 10 minutes! Will try to keep a sort of log here, if not for myself.