A Progressive Challenge-A different kind of challenge- all levels

Day 67/91..

 

Had a relaspe today. I won't give up though. Day 0

 

Day 4 of 4. My new goal is 8 days.

 

79/90
I'm kinda disappointed in myself for drinking too much this weekend. I didn't give in to PMO, though, which is awesome. And I had a good time with some friends that I don't see so often.
I feel a lot fresher and positive after a weekend of drinking than I normally would - thanks to Nofap. I'm really seeing the benefits now. I'm not letting negative thinking drag me down.
Actually it's kind of funny (never thought I'd say this!) - I'm consciously identifying automatic negative thoughts (A.N.T.s) that seem hopelessly outdated, because they are unchanged from the last time I had a hang-over! But my awareness has increased a lot since then, and now these ANTs just feel kind of stupid.
Much easier to stay positive!
My energy is coming back in full force. More urges, too.

 

I think a good mix of these would be preferable, because negative reinforcements are alright as a scare tactic, but only if you have a good portion of positive belief in yourself to counter-balance with.
So in order to have a lower barrier for what's acceptable, you must have a dream scenario to latch onto, and then stay somewhere in between. For quitting porn, of course you must have a dream, a life goal of abstaining, all the "benefits" and a healthy sex life - and then you can have a realistic goal, that is possible to work towards - day, week, month or year.
Because motivation comes from inspiration, but confidence and willpower come from achievements.

Hey man, don't let this get you down.
Having a period of heavy wet dreaming is (from what I've read) quite normal in a reboot. Don't despair! This is something you're going through right now.

Who knows, maybe through this, you will learn to control your dreams better? Maybe the person you are in your dreams and the person you are in daily life is not the same, and therefore you do things differently in dreams? I've thought a lot about this personally, because of having drug dreams.
I've learned that when sleeping or half-asleep, I don't have the kind of restraint and awareness that I have once I'm awake. Because my self-image is not the same when half-asleep. Once awake, I'm aware enough to identify old and new patterns and choose the right ones, but asleep, it all subconscious and mixed together.
But slowly, slowly it's aligning... So have patience and keep rebooting.

There are some other tips as well. Get enough exercise in the day time, cold showers and ice packs on your balls before sleep, meditation before sleep (get all the "bad thoughts" over with before you hit the pillow), don't ever fantasize. Never fantasize. I'm serious, no fantasizing!! Don't do it!

Good to see you again. Keep on trucking!

Good job

 

Okay so in over a year of nofap so far the highest streak i have managed is 86 days and that was a very long time ago. Therefore im going to set my challenge to 90 days. I've learned a tonne of things about what makes me relapse and what helps so lets see if i can put all that into practice this time around.

I came across something interesting when i was watching a youtube video on a nofap coach who had helped many PMO addicts. One of the patterns that most of the people who kept failing was more than 10 hours of TV/netflix/watching youtube a week. And i thought about that in my own life and i think part of it seems to be true. So i will cut down to less than 10 hours of screen time a week and see how that goes for me.

Day 2/90 for me

 

Welcome to the thread.
Yes there is a connection between internet addiction and porn addiction - all kinds of screen activity excites the nervous system. I have had some success with tech-free weeks.

90 days is quite a mouthful. No-one in here will think less of you if you start with a smaller goal, and then keep adding new goals, going up to 90. Meeting a goal is very encouraging, and success stories is what keeps up going here!

 

This was my plan too, especially at the beginning I need attainable goals. Also doubling means you know you can do the number of days you need to make to it to your next goal. I'll be following you

 

4/4 new goal 8 days! Feeling good.

@Bpsoldier you're welcome to join @Aleksey and I on our double your goal journey. The first goal is 24 hours.

 

Guys. I think I should tell you the whole affair.
My life has been more fucked up than I ever realized. My mother is absolutely nuts. She's a control freak. You gotta think it exactey her way, or you're an enemy. She beat me quite a lot more than what's ever considerable healthy, sometimes being very brutal and using a shoe or closing my hands an mouth for a long time if I was shouting, and she often told me stuff like "I'll fucking kill you, you bastard" or that I'm a shit person even as a very small child. I kind of always felt I lacked a normal family and one of the things that I always hated before was not being normal.
She also was pretty abusive to my father, who was a recovering heroin addict, and while that may not be a good thing, I'm pretty sure being an asshole to someone like that is much worse.
So, since my mother is a jealous and vindicative bitch, I grew up seeing my father sparingly, like it was a secret, even if he, at that point in his life, truly was a good person and just wanted to raise me the best way he could.
I was an incredibly smart, at least in terms of knowledge, and curious kid, and I have always grown tired of stuff and wanted to push it to the next level. What does that make you think of? Exactly.
I started masturbating at around age 3, then kinda forgot about it and started again at age 7 or so, and I would spend hours doing that, striking my groin on any surface in any house, even in shops, really in the weirdest ways I could find. I ended up making my dick red and bloody once.
Then, after dropping it just like it had come for a few years, since, as it usually happens with "smart" kids, a PC became my best friend. I would spend my days there, reading stuff, watching videos and stuff like that, and I soon got to porn. Meanwhile, I started being an asshole at everyone except a couple really old friends I liked to talk with. I think it was because I envied my peers more than anything. I envied the fact that they could just call a friend and say "yo, you doin' something today", I envied their bodies, their hormones, everything.
So, porn became, as everyone here knows, boring. So I started with the devious kinda stuff.
Meanwhile I found out by accident that whenever I masturbated by laying plain on the couch, my dog would go and try to fuck me. At first it was gross and horrible, but after some exposure to more outlandish porn, which made me think I was bisexual for really no reason but to feel different (hey no offence bi guys, i know bisexuality has nothing to do with that but it's my case, I believe), well i started liking to pretend that my dog was fucking me. Then I started to masturbate anally almost every night, to have a piss fetish and in the end, you know what? I fucking blew and bottomed my dog. I'm dead serious. And all of this before I even produced sperm cells, if i recall correctly.
However, things have actually improved by themselves in the last years: in 2015/16 (can't remember, I recall something about NoFap in 2015 but my first account dates 2016) I started doing NoFap. I've had tons of on and off periods with different accounts. I haven't managed to stop watching porn yet, but now it seems like vanilla porn does it for me, and the frequency has been greatly greatly reduced. It's like I got from heroin to methadone, I guess. NoFap has helped me greatly in this, at least unknowingly. Now I have a higher level of consciousess on porn and I find it absolutely disgusting in most cases and my goal is to make it disgusting in all cases.
My social life also got much better because I found people I trusted and opened up to the world, especially in the last year. Now I can become friends with someone just by sitting near him with my friends on a friday night.
I worked on myself and got over quite a lot lo limits of mine last summer, thanks to nofap, and this was I think the beginning of real change for me. Then I subscribed to a scout association and that made me grow the fuck up too, and I made two of my closest friends there.
Also, what absolutely helped me grow up was getting back in touch with my father some months ago. He's one of the most sensible and wise people I know and he's very good at making you understand what you need to. He also told me I remind him so much of his past self he's almost scared I could end up like him, also because I act so much older than my age. I always had an addictive personality I think.
Also, one other thing I believe changed me for the best is marijuana. Seriously. The social aspect of it made me understand a lot of social balances and how to make everyone happy, often sacrificing yourself for the greater good. I learned when you just gotta stop even if you're tempted, basic functional economy, made a lot of real friends, and also got myself in dangerous and unpleasant, but surviving them made me grow up fast by learning from and dealing with my errors. But also, marijuana made me realize a lot of things about myself, and make peace with them shortly after. It does free you of a lot of chains that keep yourself from looking unbiasedly and clearly at everything around you. In fact, I decided to come back here after I remembered about my dog yesterday after smoking some really good hash. I swear, I had completely erased that from my memory. I never ever thought about it once in years. In fact, I'm still processing this. I seriously can't believe it, but I know it's true.

 

@PasterofMuppets that was some post, thanks for sharing it. It sounds like life has been really tough for you at points. I hope it's getting better, it sounds like it is. Come back here and hang out with these people again, you're welcome anytime.

 

Thanks for your support! I agree 90 days is quite the achievement. My personal best on nofap is 86 days so i felt like the next logical goal would be 90 days. I feel like i can achieve this though because i know i have it in me.

Also congrats on 79 days thats fantastic and inspiring!

 

Sorry to hear about your situation man. Some people get dealt shit hands, some worse than others. But the only thing we can try to keep consistent is our drive to push forward, to better out lives and to improve other peoples lives around us. To kick our habits and try to be the best possible versions of ourselves that we can manage.

Its good to hear you're making progress and from what i read you have a long way to go yet, so keep it up mate you are on the right track

 

Hello there, thank you for sharing your incredible story.
Regarding cannabis, maybe you feel like it has freed you from some of your troubles and put things in perspective. I can really relate to that. But let me warn you. After the honeymoon period, that drug is going to limit you and your new "free" perspective is slowly going to turn into a trap that will take you years and years to get out of.
Don't repeat the mistakes of others. I've been addicted to and have quit using many kinds of drugs. Cannabis was mentally the hardest and most difficult of them all, because the addiction is so subtle and the mind tricks and justifications are complicated as hell because they are tied into everything in life after chronic use.

You are already justifying your marijuana use, so you must know that something is wrong. Also, you are still using porn, and justifying that as well.
You are only 15 years old, you already have two addictions up and running, and your father is a recovering drug addict. He has an addictive personality (and you probably have as well) and I understand that your family history is a tough one, but you have to seriously, and I mean very fucking seriously re-think your approach to marijuana.

I promise you, that all of the good and nice things you think you can achieve with drugs is going to be illusions. The effects are going to be unstable and the shadowsides will swallow you up for many years if you let yourself go.

The positive benefits you see from marijuana is the effect of the anti-anxiety components. You have some social anxiety and some general fear that the drug will momentarily take you away from. Once you get tolerant to that, you're fucked.
Cannabis will reinforce your justifications and add multiple layers of ignorance and mind tricks on top of that. Take this from someone who has smoked heavily for many, many years.

And the "freeing your mind from the chains and looking unbiased at everything around you". I'm sorry but this is just repeating the deluded hippie cliché. It's a slow acting, subtle psychedelic. It is psychoactive for 3 to 6 weeks (I'm dead serious, the first couple of hours are just the "high" part, but it changes your thinking very subtly for weeks and weeks).
What you are describing is a psychedelic experience called 'circular logic'. It will make you think and feel like everything makes sense, but once you try to express this sense in a coherent way, you will realize that it's not empirical, it just goes round in circles... If you are aware of this it is not as damaging as if you believe in it.
The problem with being 15 years old and on drugs because you're having personal problems is this: 1) There is no one with any eperience to guide you, and you can easily get lost 2) You can't even begin to know what you are doing to your own mind, because your awareness is so low to start with. 3) Your hormone levels are reacting to your drug use: you will fuck with your hormonal development - that means certain body and brain parts will over/under develop and weird risks to your wellbeing.



It will be much better for you to treat your anxiety and deal with your family history with a good therapist. Cannabis doesn't solve your problems, it just puts them off until later. If you start to rely on cannabis for relief from these things, you are going to make it much much worse - because you will remove your ability to deal with it yourself. The anxiety block that is momentarily removed from you now, will come back harder and stronger, then you have to smoke more to get the same effect and then you will be struggling with a spiralling drug addiction. Not cool, not fun, don't do it.


Find a way to remove the anxiety by yourself, sober, without any external help. Then you will have all the benefits you are listing, and more.
Meditation, journaling, exercise, travelling.



I wish someone would have told me about this when I was your age. That's why I'm taking the time to write this post.
You can always message me if there is anything you'd like to ask or discuss in private.

 

day 46/90. today was very difficult. i am the new one in my enterprise. today was the anniversary of foundation of my enterprise and i was called to open the champagne in front of every one. i was in panic, red, but i did it. i tried to be social with others at lunch. in the past surely my reaction would have been pmo. litttle by little i understand an ugly day is simply an ugly day, tomorrow i have another chance to realize my dreams, to improve myself. i think i have social phobia because i miss self esteem, i don't have a good vision of myself. i have the guilt of pmo of the past always in front of me as a weight. i look at myself in the mirror, my eyes and i say i am not guilty, i did some non perfect actions, it is enough. i accept what i did but i want to improve my life. a challenge in this forum is a time to improve, to understandsomething about me

 

Hey dude, before replying to your advice you made me notice some stuff that wasn't clear in my post I gotta clarify. What I meant when I said "I still watch porn" was that I did until the moment of coming back here. I have just gone through a bad period where I didn't care anymore but I'm now committed to coming back.
Dude I really have no anxiety problem, I have always been actually very good at having and making friends, I simply was snobbish and looked at everyone from a pedestal. I just grew as a person and matured, cannabis didn't give me this magical power, I just happened to meet cool people in that setting.
And yeah, I see what you mean. The thing is it hasn't slowed me down in any way I can see. Also yeah that is a hippie cliché but you can actually use it to achieve a similar effect. Although it's not like have this random folgoration and you go "OH MY GOD ALL OF DIZ MAKE SENSE NAH DOOD", it's just like a cup of tea or music, it helps you chill down and think for a moment, and sometimes you break down some big things that way. I don't even like smoking a lot or in stressful situations. If a problem is very threatening, I know I better stay sober. If my mood is fucked up, I gotta stay sober. When I'm in peace it's a good time to see some friends and chill for a while. But other than that, I don't smoke alone. It's useless and boring.
I also now avoid alcohol as it's an incredibly dangerous drug. I know because I once got drunk alone for no reason and can't stand it since.
Also, I think I have someone to guide me. You see, my father smokes too. And he's fine with me smoking, sometimes we even do it together, but he told me that I'm being watched and he will take action if something goes wrong with it, and he has plenty of advice to give me on what's okay and what's not
However, I actually am concerned with the development issues. I don't really know what to believe... I have seen examples of people that smoked much more weed than me earlier than me that turned out completely fine... I think it's kind of a luck thing, I have read researches that say you'll be fine, but I am very aware of those that say you won't and I stop and think of it quite a lot, but I think having a pretty large frequency and not doing it everyday already eliminates most of the risk.

 

I’m okay guys. Good to hear from all of you!

Sounds good. Thanks for sharing!

Okay, you got this. Life’ll be better at the other side of the tunnel.

Good to hear!

Welcome aboard! Good luck with the challenge.

Cutting screen time of is hard, but it helps A LOT. I’m struggling with it myself at the moment. Good luck man!

 

22/30

 

0/10 starting again