LongSault
Fapstronaut
On the 18 of March, I was sitting in a study room on my college campus, vainly attempting to backup the massive porn collection that I had on my computer onto an external hard drive. My rational was that if this latest attempt to quit was unsuccessful, I could just recover my collection and continue where I left off. It didn't matter to me that I was already late for class, and not for the first time either. Nor did it matter to me at the time that I was handling such sensitive content at school; I'm not actually watching it, I reasoned.
There was just one problem (well, several actually). The collection I was trying to move over was well over 100 gigabytes; successfully moving it over to my hard drive would take several hours, contrary to my earlier predictions. It also didn't help that I had class at that time, as well as work later on that day. As the minutes passed, I grew steadily impatient, a symptom of being addicted to something that promises instant gratification. Finally, when my impatience reached its zenith, I angrily thought "To hell with it," and just deleted all the adult content altogether. Within 60 seconds, it was all gone, with no backups to recover. With that, I quietly packed up my belongings and walked off to class, perhaps cheekily wondering how this latest attempt at quitting would last.
That was over two months ago; 66 days to be exact. That's the longest stretch of time that I've gone without porn since discovering it in my entire life.
I'll spare the details of how I discovered porn but suffice to say it's been in my life since 2004; September would have been 20 years of an on-and-off addiction. Between then and now, I must have tried quitting over 100 times (maybe even 1000), but to no avail. For the sake of this post, I'll just focus on the four most significant attempts at quitting, and how they differentiate from one another.
2017
The first [relatively] successful attempt at quitting was in 2017. I was working a minimum wage job and a print shop, and decided that I wanted to go without porn or masturbation for good. That only lasted 30 days before I relapsed again. Interestingly, I had no outside triggers that led to the relapse, but if memory serves me correctly, I was just bored with quitting. Nothing else in life had changed; I was still working the same dead-end job, had no friends, and no real vision on which to take my life.
2018
2018 was my second (and least successful) of these attempts. I had joined the forum Rewire Companion and found some accountability partners, but my recovery lasted a mere 22 days before I chose to quit. I had a new job at that point, but I was once again bored with recovery. I remember my attitude being "Okay, I've given up porn/masturbation. Now what?" Since I didn't have an answer to the Now what question, it was only inevitable that my recovery wouldn't last or have any meaningful impact. With that, I wouldn't make another serious attempt for the next five years.
2023
Now we move to 2023, which - up until that point - had been my most successful attempt at quitting porn up to that point. By this time, I had gone back to school and had gotten a much better job than the ones I previously had (I still have that job to this day). Not to mention I made some really valuable friendships that have also lasted to the present. I had joined NoFap for the first time with my previous account and decided after reading some of the success stories to try quitting one more time. I went cold turkey, giving up PMO, while installing Freedom on my computer to block not only adult content, but also all social media websites as well. I began taking (mostly) cold showers like some here do and took up Muay Thai classes at a local gym. I had never been more confident in my ability to succeed at any other point in my life.
However, there were a lot of other issues that I never really paid much attention to, which ultimately led to my downfall. After being ghosted by two women at college, I finally gave up trying to quit, closed my NoFap account and went back to porn. In hindsight, I fell for the lie that gets pushed on this forum way too much: this idea that giving up porn will make you attractive to the opposite sex and might even lead to a long-term relationship. I won't go into details about the specifics that happened, but I became very disillusioned with the NoFap forum and mentality after that point. I got sick of the challenges (Lord of the Rings, Matrix, Star Wars, etc), which I thought (and still think) are infantile and missing the forest for the trees. Last year, I met people here who were suicidal, struggling with alcoholism and other ailments; it soon became clear that porn was a coping mechanism for childhood traumas, health issues and other problems that users were facing. There were so many voices here swearing by the power of the mythical '90-day reset,' while themselves unable to go porn/masturbation free for a week before relapsing. Clearly, this forum has a lot of problems, but that's beyond the scope of this post.
2024
I sank back into my old habits, which I'm sure every guy here can identify with to varying degrees. However, as 2024 rolled around, it soon dawned on me that I would be approaching 20 years of addiction, a thought which made me feel very uneasy. That would mean that 2/3 of my life had already been lost to this addiction, a factoid that did not sit well with me in the slightest. I could already see the negative side effects that constant PMO was causing me:
Which brings me back to March 18. I was trying to give myself an out in case things didn't work out, but I decided against it and got rid of all of my downloaded content, which totaled well over 100 gigabytes. It's now late May, with summer right around the corner, and I haven't touched pornography for over two months. However, for the sake of full disclosure, I still masturbate, though without any external stimulant, which I'll explain a bit later. For now, I want to try and explain why I think I was able to succeed in staying porn-free for over two months (note that this is entirely subjective).
#1 - Having a life goal
I think going back to school made a HUGE difference. On one hand, I'm currently pursuing a degree, with the intent of getting further education in a program more focused on my career goals right after. To supplement those goals, I began volunteering with organizations that reflect the kind of work that I want to do upon graduation. My professors have been a valuable resource in offering free advice where my career goals are concerned.
In previous attempts at quitting, I had no life goals whatsoever. I was working dead ends jobs, I wasn't in school before Covid, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Sure, I had some hobbies, but it wasn't the same thing. I wasn't even developing any skills that could potentially translate into a career prospect.
#2 - Photography
This was a mandatory part of my education when I first started my current program, and I have to confess that I hated it at first. However, as fate would have it, one of the librarians at my college is an award-winning photographer, and she's been mentoring me and showing me the ropes. That began in March of this year; since then, I've photographed five concerts (the sixth will be next month, though I might squeeze in a few more before the month ends). I've photographed two sporting events and am currently looking into a third. Meanwhile, my schedule for June is packed with events; it's definitely going to be a demanding month.
The most important thing is that I've fallen in love with photography, but not so much because it's an enjoyable past time (which it is, mind you). It's the only hobby that I've ever had which kept me away from porn for over two months. Since I spend most of my time commuting to venues and photographing them, rather than staying in front of a computer or the internet as a whole (not to mention driving hours away in some cases), there's simply no time for PMO. Just for that fact alone, I refuse to give up photography, while I also intend to make the most of it as humanly possible.
#3 - Rejecting the Black Pill (and internet personalities as a whole)
Now this is a subject I'm going to be rather curt about, since it's inherently divisive and I could dedicate hours to this topic if I had the time. Suffice to say, unlike when I first joined this forum, I've come to completely reject the so-called black pill way of thinking that dominated my mentality since 2018.
The black pill community (better known as the incel community, though others use the term as well) champion this idea that the reason why some men are unsuccessful in forming relationships/getting sex is because they are ugly. I admit that my romantic life is non-existent (I have no shame in that, unlike before), but prior to 2018, I never believed that I was ugly. Not only did listening to the black pill put that thought in my head, but also convinced me that I needed very expensive surgeries to enhance my appearance; not so much to attract women, but to be able to see myself as good looking. The more intuitive among you might recognize this for what it is: body dysmorphia, which is how I have now come to view the overall black pill message as.
PUAs (or scam artists in my opinion) will tell you that game attracts women, while teaching gullible and desperate men to apply silly pickup lines and choreographed cheap tricks to talk/panhandle your way into a woman's bed. On the other hand, some MGTOW claim that women are attracted to men's money and status, but do not inherently love men as people; once a man with more money and status comes along, a woman will desert a relationship (monkey branching, as they call it) to trade up to something better. Incels built on this thinking by saying that women respond largely to a man's physical attractiveness, while also exalting very extreme modern beauty examples as the evolutionary standard of what women are wired by nature to want (despite the fact that most men never looked like this for most of human history in any culture). Even some NoFap members fall into one camp or another, arguing amongst themselves what a man must do to attract women.
My current stance is that I don't know what women are attracted to, nor do I care anymore. All I know is that they aren't attracted to me (why not is their business), and I was extremely depressed trying and failing to court innumerable women over the past 18 years. Now, mid-2024, I want nothing to do with them where romance and courtship are concerned. Meanwhile, I refuse to lend an ear to any of these online voices and their infinite arrangement of 'pills' that men ought to swallow. I've decided to seek out counselling to get rid of this body image issue that incels exacerbated, while avoiding all this content online at all costs. I also got rid of political commentators, who usually come in the form of complaining about the woke and left-wing progressive politics on their YouTube/Rumble channels or livestreams that last for several hours. You have no idea how liberating that all is!
Oh well, so much for being curt.
At this point, I've realized that porn blockers, though useful, aren't really the secret to getting rid of an addiction. That's why, moving forward, I'm not interested in using Freedom anymore. It's a great app to prevent distractions, but there was so much more to overcoming PMO addiction. Though I can't boil it down to a single thesis, I truly believe that a combination of having life goals, a strong network of friends and a hobby that took me out of my comfort zone all played a role in making my path to recovery successful this time around. I can't guarantee that I'll never relapse again - we all make mistakes after all - but at least if I do, I can look back on these days and see how much of a difference giving up porn has made in my life.
Now, as I said earlier, I still masturbate, which some might see as falling short, however, masturbating with porn is a VERY DIFFERENT animal than without. Without, I'm in and out in ten minutes or less, but with, it can last for hours and can result in loss of sleep or even painful friction burns. However, I do intend to limit the practice as much as I can (no more than twice a week is my goal), before attempting to phase it out of my life entirely.
Oh well, that's all I have to say for now!
There was just one problem (well, several actually). The collection I was trying to move over was well over 100 gigabytes; successfully moving it over to my hard drive would take several hours, contrary to my earlier predictions. It also didn't help that I had class at that time, as well as work later on that day. As the minutes passed, I grew steadily impatient, a symptom of being addicted to something that promises instant gratification. Finally, when my impatience reached its zenith, I angrily thought "To hell with it," and just deleted all the adult content altogether. Within 60 seconds, it was all gone, with no backups to recover. With that, I quietly packed up my belongings and walked off to class, perhaps cheekily wondering how this latest attempt at quitting would last.
That was over two months ago; 66 days to be exact. That's the longest stretch of time that I've gone without porn since discovering it in my entire life.
I'll spare the details of how I discovered porn but suffice to say it's been in my life since 2004; September would have been 20 years of an on-and-off addiction. Between then and now, I must have tried quitting over 100 times (maybe even 1000), but to no avail. For the sake of this post, I'll just focus on the four most significant attempts at quitting, and how they differentiate from one another.
2017
The first [relatively] successful attempt at quitting was in 2017. I was working a minimum wage job and a print shop, and decided that I wanted to go without porn or masturbation for good. That only lasted 30 days before I relapsed again. Interestingly, I had no outside triggers that led to the relapse, but if memory serves me correctly, I was just bored with quitting. Nothing else in life had changed; I was still working the same dead-end job, had no friends, and no real vision on which to take my life.
2018
2018 was my second (and least successful) of these attempts. I had joined the forum Rewire Companion and found some accountability partners, but my recovery lasted a mere 22 days before I chose to quit. I had a new job at that point, but I was once again bored with recovery. I remember my attitude being "Okay, I've given up porn/masturbation. Now what?" Since I didn't have an answer to the Now what question, it was only inevitable that my recovery wouldn't last or have any meaningful impact. With that, I wouldn't make another serious attempt for the next five years.
2023
Now we move to 2023, which - up until that point - had been my most successful attempt at quitting porn up to that point. By this time, I had gone back to school and had gotten a much better job than the ones I previously had (I still have that job to this day). Not to mention I made some really valuable friendships that have also lasted to the present. I had joined NoFap for the first time with my previous account and decided after reading some of the success stories to try quitting one more time. I went cold turkey, giving up PMO, while installing Freedom on my computer to block not only adult content, but also all social media websites as well. I began taking (mostly) cold showers like some here do and took up Muay Thai classes at a local gym. I had never been more confident in my ability to succeed at any other point in my life.
However, there were a lot of other issues that I never really paid much attention to, which ultimately led to my downfall. After being ghosted by two women at college, I finally gave up trying to quit, closed my NoFap account and went back to porn. In hindsight, I fell for the lie that gets pushed on this forum way too much: this idea that giving up porn will make you attractive to the opposite sex and might even lead to a long-term relationship. I won't go into details about the specifics that happened, but I became very disillusioned with the NoFap forum and mentality after that point. I got sick of the challenges (Lord of the Rings, Matrix, Star Wars, etc), which I thought (and still think) are infantile and missing the forest for the trees. Last year, I met people here who were suicidal, struggling with alcoholism and other ailments; it soon became clear that porn was a coping mechanism for childhood traumas, health issues and other problems that users were facing. There were so many voices here swearing by the power of the mythical '90-day reset,' while themselves unable to go porn/masturbation free for a week before relapsing. Clearly, this forum has a lot of problems, but that's beyond the scope of this post.
2024
I sank back into my old habits, which I'm sure every guy here can identify with to varying degrees. However, as 2024 rolled around, it soon dawned on me that I would be approaching 20 years of addiction, a thought which made me feel very uneasy. That would mean that 2/3 of my life had already been lost to this addiction, a factoid that did not sit well with me in the slightest. I could already see the negative side effects that constant PMO was causing me:
- Disgusting fetishes that often clashed with my values or played on my insecurities.
- Constant fear of being discovered (at work, from family, or in public places)
- Becoming increasingly secretive about my activities
- Loss of self-esteem (due to the shame of my fetishes)
- Complete lack of drive, ambition or career goals
- Money wasted on adult-oriented Kickstarter campaigns
- Lack of sleep and the resulting fatigue
- Falling asleep behind the wheel (which happened three times now)
Which brings me back to March 18. I was trying to give myself an out in case things didn't work out, but I decided against it and got rid of all of my downloaded content, which totaled well over 100 gigabytes. It's now late May, with summer right around the corner, and I haven't touched pornography for over two months. However, for the sake of full disclosure, I still masturbate, though without any external stimulant, which I'll explain a bit later. For now, I want to try and explain why I think I was able to succeed in staying porn-free for over two months (note that this is entirely subjective).
#1 - Having a life goal
I think going back to school made a HUGE difference. On one hand, I'm currently pursuing a degree, with the intent of getting further education in a program more focused on my career goals right after. To supplement those goals, I began volunteering with organizations that reflect the kind of work that I want to do upon graduation. My professors have been a valuable resource in offering free advice where my career goals are concerned.
In previous attempts at quitting, I had no life goals whatsoever. I was working dead ends jobs, I wasn't in school before Covid, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Sure, I had some hobbies, but it wasn't the same thing. I wasn't even developing any skills that could potentially translate into a career prospect.
#2 - Photography
This was a mandatory part of my education when I first started my current program, and I have to confess that I hated it at first. However, as fate would have it, one of the librarians at my college is an award-winning photographer, and she's been mentoring me and showing me the ropes. That began in March of this year; since then, I've photographed five concerts (the sixth will be next month, though I might squeeze in a few more before the month ends). I've photographed two sporting events and am currently looking into a third. Meanwhile, my schedule for June is packed with events; it's definitely going to be a demanding month.
The most important thing is that I've fallen in love with photography, but not so much because it's an enjoyable past time (which it is, mind you). It's the only hobby that I've ever had which kept me away from porn for over two months. Since I spend most of my time commuting to venues and photographing them, rather than staying in front of a computer or the internet as a whole (not to mention driving hours away in some cases), there's simply no time for PMO. Just for that fact alone, I refuse to give up photography, while I also intend to make the most of it as humanly possible.
#3 - Rejecting the Black Pill (and internet personalities as a whole)
Now this is a subject I'm going to be rather curt about, since it's inherently divisive and I could dedicate hours to this topic if I had the time. Suffice to say, unlike when I first joined this forum, I've come to completely reject the so-called black pill way of thinking that dominated my mentality since 2018.
The black pill community (better known as the incel community, though others use the term as well) champion this idea that the reason why some men are unsuccessful in forming relationships/getting sex is because they are ugly. I admit that my romantic life is non-existent (I have no shame in that, unlike before), but prior to 2018, I never believed that I was ugly. Not only did listening to the black pill put that thought in my head, but also convinced me that I needed very expensive surgeries to enhance my appearance; not so much to attract women, but to be able to see myself as good looking. The more intuitive among you might recognize this for what it is: body dysmorphia, which is how I have now come to view the overall black pill message as.
PUAs (or scam artists in my opinion) will tell you that game attracts women, while teaching gullible and desperate men to apply silly pickup lines and choreographed cheap tricks to talk/panhandle your way into a woman's bed. On the other hand, some MGTOW claim that women are attracted to men's money and status, but do not inherently love men as people; once a man with more money and status comes along, a woman will desert a relationship (monkey branching, as they call it) to trade up to something better. Incels built on this thinking by saying that women respond largely to a man's physical attractiveness, while also exalting very extreme modern beauty examples as the evolutionary standard of what women are wired by nature to want (despite the fact that most men never looked like this for most of human history in any culture). Even some NoFap members fall into one camp or another, arguing amongst themselves what a man must do to attract women.
My current stance is that I don't know what women are attracted to, nor do I care anymore. All I know is that they aren't attracted to me (why not is their business), and I was extremely depressed trying and failing to court innumerable women over the past 18 years. Now, mid-2024, I want nothing to do with them where romance and courtship are concerned. Meanwhile, I refuse to lend an ear to any of these online voices and their infinite arrangement of 'pills' that men ought to swallow. I've decided to seek out counselling to get rid of this body image issue that incels exacerbated, while avoiding all this content online at all costs. I also got rid of political commentators, who usually come in the form of complaining about the woke and left-wing progressive politics on their YouTube/Rumble channels or livestreams that last for several hours. You have no idea how liberating that all is!
Oh well, so much for being curt.
At this point, I've realized that porn blockers, though useful, aren't really the secret to getting rid of an addiction. That's why, moving forward, I'm not interested in using Freedom anymore. It's a great app to prevent distractions, but there was so much more to overcoming PMO addiction. Though I can't boil it down to a single thesis, I truly believe that a combination of having life goals, a strong network of friends and a hobby that took me out of my comfort zone all played a role in making my path to recovery successful this time around. I can't guarantee that I'll never relapse again - we all make mistakes after all - but at least if I do, I can look back on these days and see how much of a difference giving up porn has made in my life.
Now, as I said earlier, I still masturbate, which some might see as falling short, however, masturbating with porn is a VERY DIFFERENT animal than without. Without, I'm in and out in ten minutes or less, but with, it can last for hours and can result in loss of sleep or even painful friction burns. However, I do intend to limit the practice as much as I can (no more than twice a week is my goal), before attempting to phase it out of my life entirely.
Oh well, that's all I have to say for now!
keep going it’s inspiring to read your story
