90 Days After 15 Years of Failure

H

hedisfan31

Fapstronaut
After 15 years of nearly daily PMO and half-hearted attempts at quitting, I've finally achieved some real measure of success and for the first time in a long time I'm proud of who I am.

I am in my early thirties and have been with the same girl since our senior year in high school. I developed an addiction to cybersex and erotic roleplay before we got together, and sadly have struggled our whole relationship to kick my habit. We're married and have kids now. Every once in a while, things would improve for short periods of time but I'd never truly beaten it. I feel miserable about the things I've done behind her back. For so long I've felt lower than low, like I must be the worst person in the world to behave the way I do.

Those feelings of guilt and shame never really motivated me enough to change, however. A familiar feeling to many of you, I'm sure, is the excitement and thrill of discovering some new form of PMO, or planning out just how you'll edge for a few hours while the house is empty. Even during periods where I was ostensibly trying to stop myself, the feeling that my failure was inevitable was usually a self-fulfilling prophesy that lead to dramatic binges.

After a particularly bad relapse earlier this year, I did some searching around and discovered this website. It was a revelation to me that other people also struggled with the same issues, felt just as bad, and were trying to quit. I started a reboot log 92 days ago and have been PMO-free since.

Here's what worked for me, with a few of my thoughts and motivations along the way.

1) A positive outlook.
Beating myself up for 15 years did nothing except make me hate myself. I hope it doesn't seem too trite, but shifting my mindset from "I'm a horrible person and a total loser" to "I can do anything I set my mind to and I can be the person I want to be" was absolutely key to beating the particularly dooming feeling of inevitable failure.

2) Focusing on feelings.
I realized that PMO felt really good in the moment (obviously, that's why I'm addicted!) but that the shame and regret afterward are even stronger. Remembering how that shame feels every time I felt like giving in was usually enough to get me through an urge unscathed. A particular breakthrough moment for me happened when I wrote about my last relapse, what lead to it, what it felt like, and why I wanted to avoid that feeling. This let me replace the feelings I subconsciously associated with PMO, taking me from 'this is fun!' to 'this makes me feel terrible'.

3) Leave the house.
Literally just go for a walk around the block. If you don't feel better and think you might still fail, walk further. Sitting around your home twiddling your thumbs and trying to will yourself to be strong is an uphill battle.

4) Identifying non-PMO factors.
The most extreme measure I took was to try to rewire my brain in every arena. My thinking is this:
  1. PMO releases a massive cascade of fun and addictive brain chemicals.
  2. Most forms of entertainment do the same thing to varying lesser degrees.
  3. My brain craves these chemicals, and has been made weak by overexposure to them.
  4. It is unreasonable to expect my brain to resist these chemicals from one source when I am still overloading it using a different source.
To improve this, I did a lot:
  • Blocked all social media and time-wasting websites
  • Canceled all streaming services
  • Stopped playing video games unless invited to play with a friend.
  • Installed an app blocker on my computer that prevented me from even opening a browser outside of a specified time
  • Stopped listening to podcasts
  • Once I realized I was just reading more and more clickbait news articles, I blocked the news and a bunch of blog sites as well.
  • I had already gotten rid of my smartphone years before, but if I hadn't I would have done that here or invested in a lockbox device or similar.
I think that all of this, while extreme sounding, was really the key. It established a healthier relationship with all of my devices and reframed them as boring work tools, rather than devices for mental stimulation/numbing. It might seem like overkill to some of you, but I think this was the biggest component to my success and I wish I'd done it years ago.

The results so far have been astonishing. I've never felt better in my life, and I'm finally getting closer to being the person I want to be. I have more patience with my kids and more time to spend with them. My attention span is better, I work more efficiently and effectively, and have more energy at the end of the day. In the last 90 days I've read more books and picked up more real hobbies than I've had in the last 10 years. I picked up photography and bought a camera. I started playing pickup soccer, and with it started running and yoga to get in shape.

Moving forward, it will be more of the same. I am getting movies from the library when I really feel like I want to veg out, and will probably unblock the news closer to the US presidential election, but there is little redemptive value for me in spending large amounts of time online.

I hope that this helps someone out there. You are in control of your life and can choose how to live it.
 
I love this
hedisfan31 said:
After 15 years of nearly daily PMO and half-hearted attempts at quitting, I've finally achieved some real measure of success and for the first time in a long time I'm proud of who I am.

I am in my early thirties and have been with the same girl since our senior year in high school. I developed an addiction to cybersex and erotic roleplay before we got together, and sadly have struggled our whole relationship to kick my habit. We're married and have kids now. Every once in a while, things would improve for short periods of time but I'd never truly beaten it. I feel miserable about the things I've done behind her back. For so long I've felt lower than low, like I must be the worst person in the world to behave the way I do.

Those feelings of guilt and shame never really motivated me enough to change, however. A familiar feeling to many of you, I'm sure, is the excitement and thrill of discovering some new form of PMO, or planning out just how you'll edge for a few hours while the house is empty. Even during periods where I was ostensibly trying to stop myself, the feeling that my failure was inevitable was usually a self-fulfilling prophesy that lead to dramatic binges.

After a particularly bad relapse earlier this year, I did some searching around and discovered this website. It was a revelation to me that other people also struggled with the same issues, felt just as bad, and were trying to quit. I started a reboot log 92 days ago and have been PMO-free since.

Here's what worked for me, with a few of my thoughts and motivations along the way.

1) A positive outlook.
Beating myself up for 15 years did nothing except make me hate myself. I hope it doesn't seem too trite, but shifting my mindset from "I'm a horrible person and a total loser" to "I can do anything I set my mind to and I can be the person I want to be" was absolutely key to beating the particularly dooming feeling of inevitable failure.

2) Focusing on feelings.
I realized that PMO felt really good in the moment (obviously, that's why I'm addicted!) but that the shame and regret afterward are even stronger. Remembering how that shame feels every time I felt like giving in was usually enough to get me through an urge unscathed. A particular breakthrough moment for me happened when I wrote about my last relapse, what lead to it, what it felt like, and why I wanted to avoid that feeling. This let me replace the feelings I subconsciously associated with PMO, taking me from 'this is fun!' to 'this makes me feel terrible'.

3) Leave the house.
Literally just go for a walk around the block. If you don't feel better and think you might still fail, walk further. Sitting around your home twiddling your thumbs and trying to will yourself to be strong is an uphill battle.

4) Identifying non-PMO factors.
The most extreme measure I took was to try to rewire my brain in every arena. My thinking is this:
  1. PMO releases a massive cascade of fun and addictive brain chemicals.
  2. Most forms of entertainment do the same thing to varying lesser degrees.
  3. My brain craves these chemicals, and has been made weak by overexposure to them.
  4. It is unreasonable to expect my brain to resist these chemicals from one source when I am still overloading it using a different source.
To improve this, I did a lot:
  • Blocked all social media and time-wasting websites
  • Canceled all streaming services
  • Stopped playing video games unless invited to play with a friend.
  • Installed an app blocker on my computer that prevented me from even opening a browser outside of a specified time
  • Stopped listening to podcasts
  • Once I realized I was just reading more and more clickbait news articles, I blocked the news and a bunch of blog sites as well.
  • I had already gotten rid of my smartphone years before, but if I hadn't I would have done that here or invested in a lockbox device or similar.
I think that all of this, while extreme sounding, was really the key. It established a healthier relationship with all of my devices and reframed them as boring work tools, rather than devices for mental stimulation/numbing. It might seem like overkill to some of you, but I think this was the biggest component to my success and I wish I'd done it years ago.

The results so far have been astonishing. I've never felt better in my life, and I'm finally getting closer to being the person I want to be. I have more patience with my kids and more time to spend with them. My attention span is better, I work more efficiently and effectively, and have more energy at the end of the day. In the last 90 days I've read more books and picked up more real hobbies than I've had in the last 10 years. I picked up photography and bought a camera. I started playing pickup soccer, and with it started running and yoga to get in shape.

Moving forward, it will be more of the same. I am getting movies from the library when I really feel like I want to veg out, and will probably unblock the news closer to the US presidential election, but there is little redemptive value for me in spending large amounts of time online.

I hope that this helps someone out there. You are in control of your life and can choose how to live it.
Click to expand...
I am so encouraged by your success thus far. Thank you for sharing! Really thank you! I will implement some of the strategies you used.
 
2MuchSauce916 said:
Congrats man this is extremely motivating. Can you expand in detail about what benefits and positive changes you have noticed?
Click to expand...

Sure thing brother. Of course, the main goal and benefit of all of this was PMO cessation, but because I changed a lot about my life simultaneously there were changes that are probably unrelated to PMO cessation. I'm happy to talk about everything, but take with a grain of salt.

The sexual health stuff is probably fairly boilerplate stuff that most people experience. I suffered from occasional PIED - that is gone now. I used to feel some pretty intense self body-shame. Turns out when you're not comparing yourself to 95th percentile men all the time that goes away. I'd developed sort of bizarre fantasies and fetishes, the kind that can only come from the escalating intensity of P after long term consumption. Honestly I don't know if those have completely gone away yet. I can say I certainly think about them a lot less, if at all, indicating to me that they were the true result of my PMO habits and not "real" in true way, and probably will go away for good if I continue to practice good habits.

The big gain for me was time. On days when I would PMO it would usually be for several hours, sometimes spread out over the course of a full day. I'd estimate an average chat-room visit to be 2.5 hours per day, but up to 5 hours for 'special occasions' or if I was home alone overnight. On top of that, I spend, like most modern people, multiple additional hours per day in front of a screen for pure entertainment purposes. I'd estimate that I spent probably 3 hours per day on non-PMO internet usage (reading articles, browsing reddit, watching youtube, etc.). That number is probably less on PMO days. So at minimum I gained back 2.5 hours per day, but often far more.

Once that time opened up I filled it with more worthwhile activities, some of which I detailed in my main post. On the physical side, I started running, yoga, and very occasional body weight strength training. Some accomplishments I made in 90 days: I went from not being able to touch my toes to touching the floor, I went from not running at all to running 3 miles per day, from able to do 5 pullups to doing 10, I fixed some chronic hip pain, and lost 4 pounds.

The mental or behavioral side is a little harder to measure, but I have one small example of my increased attention span. It's a small thing and probably a little silly, but I was excited when I realized it. I use a computer program at work that takes about 45 seconds to load. It used to be that I would start opening the program, then open a browser and scan news headlines for 45 seconds until the program was ready to use. I noticed about 30 days in that one morning I had just... not opened up a browser during those 45 seconds. That I was just sitting there patiently waiting for the program to open. This would have been unbearable to me before, but now, not only was I capable of sitting there with my own thoughts, but it didn't even occur to me to switch tasks while I was waiting. The other attention span gains have been phenomenal too. I'm able to sit and read for hours the way I remember doing as a kid - even for 'dry' subject matter I feel unshakeable (since starting this, among other things, I read Guns, Germs, and Steel; Crime and Punishment; two biographies of physicists, and am in the middle of The Making of the Atomic Bomb).

I mentioned my patience with my kids too. Parenting is classically complex because kids are opaque, constantly changing, and require creative problem solving skills. When I was sapping away all my mental energy with dumb PMO activities, I had little left for my kids. Some small things that usually are just the result of kids being kids used to frustrate me a lot, and now they do less often. The kind of complex thought that is required to help them grow is now available to me more often, and I find myself "pre-thinking" and anticipating their problems, rather than just reacting.
 
hedisfan31 said:
After 15 years of nearly daily PMO and half-hearted attempts at quitting, I've finally achieved some real measure of success and for the first time in a long time I'm proud of who I am.

I am in my early thirties and have been with the same girl since our senior year in high school. I developed an addiction to cybersex and erotic roleplay before we got together, and sadly have struggled our whole relationship to kick my habit. We're married and have kids now. Every once in a while, things would improve for short periods of time but I'd never truly beaten it. I feel miserable about the things I've done behind her back. For so long I've felt lower than low, like I must be the worst person in the world to behave the way I do.

Those feelings of guilt and shame never really motivated me enough to change, however. A familiar feeling to many of you, I'm sure, is the excitement and thrill of discovering some new form of PMO, or planning out just how you'll edge for a few hours while the house is empty. Even during periods where I was ostensibly trying to stop myself, the feeling that my failure was inevitable was usually a self-fulfilling prophesy that lead to dramatic binges.

After a particularly bad relapse earlier this year, I did some searching around and discovered this website. It was a revelation to me that other people also struggled with the same issues, felt just as bad, and were trying to quit. I started a reboot log 92 days ago and have been PMO-free since.

Here's what worked for me, with a few of my thoughts and motivations along the way.

1) A positive outlook.
Beating myself up for 15 years did nothing except make me hate myself. I hope it doesn't seem too trite, but shifting my mindset from "I'm a horrible person and a total loser" to "I can do anything I set my mind to and I can be the person I want to be" was absolutely key to beating the particularly dooming feeling of inevitable failure.

2) Focusing on feelings.
I realized that PMO felt really good in the moment (obviously, that's why I'm addicted!) but that the shame and regret afterward are even stronger. Remembering how that shame feels every time I felt like giving in was usually enough to get me through an urge unscathed. A particular breakthrough moment for me happened when I wrote about my last relapse, what lead to it, what it felt like, and why I wanted to avoid that feeling. This let me replace the feelings I subconsciously associated with PMO, taking me from 'this is fun!' to 'this makes me feel terrible'.

3) Leave the house.
Literally just go for a walk around the block. If you don't feel better and think you might still fail, walk further. Sitting around your home twiddling your thumbs and trying to will yourself to be strong is an uphill battle.

4) Identifying non-PMO factors.
The most extreme measure I took was to try to rewire my brain in every arena. My thinking is this:
  1. PMO releases a massive cascade of fun and addictive brain chemicals.
  2. Most forms of entertainment do the same thing to varying lesser degrees.
  3. My brain craves these chemicals, and has been made weak by overexposure to them.
  4. It is unreasonable to expect my brain to resist these chemicals from one source when I am still overloading it using a different source.
To improve this, I did a lot:
  • Blocked all social media and time-wasting websites
  • Canceled all streaming services
  • Stopped playing video games unless invited to play with a friend.
  • Installed an app blocker on my computer that prevented me from even opening a browser outside of a specified time
  • Stopped listening to podcasts
  • Once I realized I was just reading more and more clickbait news articles, I blocked the news and a bunch of blog sites as well.
  • I had already gotten rid of my smartphone years before, but if I hadn't I would have done that here or invested in a lockbox device or similar.
I think that all of this, while extreme sounding, was really the key. It established a healthier relationship with all of my devices and reframed them as boring work tools, rather than devices for mental stimulation/numbing. It might seem like overkill to some of you, but I think this was the biggest component to my success and I wish I'd done it years ago.

The results so far have been astonishing. I've never felt better in my life, and I'm finally getting closer to being the person I want to be. I have more patience with my kids and more time to spend with them. My attention span is better, I work more efficiently and effectively, and have more energy at the end of the day. In the last 90 days I've read more books and picked up more real hobbies than I've had in the last 10 years. I picked up photography and bought a camera. I started playing pickup soccer, and with it started running and yoga to get in shape.

Moving forward, it will be more of the same. I am getting movies from the library when I really feel like I want to veg out, and will probably unblock the news closer to the US presidential election, but there is little redemptive value for me in spending large amounts of time online.

I hope that this helps someone out there. You are in control of your life and can choose how to live it.
Click to expand...
My ooooh my!!!!! You have certainly taken drastic measures to sway yourself into the right path. I'm so happy for you. One thing is certain, and you have mentioned it in your post, the internet is riddled with things that can easily make us relapse. It is best to block certain sites or just be off the internet. I have blocked so many sites. Even my Youtube is just videos that motivate me, videos about travel and other things that channel my soul in the right direction. Many videos that Youtube suggest to me are blocked as they tend to have elements I am really steering from.
 
Well done @hedisfan31, I think one needs to take these drastic measures, because the enemy we are dealing with is not an easy opponent. By far the toughest enemy one can face in one's life. I have been trying hard but has never gone beyond 14 days till now. But I only started to quit PMO from a last couple of months. Before that I was caught in the myth of mainstream medicine, "do it, it is a stress buster, it is even healthy", wtf!!

It is only after you start trying to quit, you realize there so many triggers around you, every relapse makes to get rid of one. Keep these success stories coming, they are a real motivation, hoping to reach a 90 days mark someday myself and share my experience here.
 
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