Hi all! Just hit 30 days today

Hi fellow fapstronauts! I'm an 18 year old male from Singapore. I've never been on this site before so I'm trying to get oriented. I have lurked the NoFap subreddit before though and this place looks a lot more organised.

Like many, I started PMO at the young age of 10 or so and progressed to more extreme types of porn. I also liked roaming around in my apartment complex naked though I don't want to get caught. I'll spare the details as they might be dangerous for people who are in the midst of rebooting, especially myself since I'm the one who knows what I'd done most clearly.

I've wanted to stop PMO a couple years back but couldn't find the will to. But then again, I can't say I was trying my hardest then. Of course, I was disgusted by what I was doing and felt like utter shit and stuff but I'm not gonna dwell on such negative feelings. Plus, PMO stopped making me feel good, so I was pretty much setting myself up for more depression every time I do it.

Last December, I wanted to seriously stop this obscene addiction and started looking up materials to stop PMO. Idk if they actually helped, but that was the start of my NoFap journey. I lurked on the subreddit, as mentioned before, and read the many success stories and daily struggles of fapstronauts with this addiction. I also tried to find the other negative effects of PMO and the benefits of abstaining from it. While those materials convinced me, it was only when I really went on NoFap streaks did I really experienced and enjoyed the PMO-free life.

I also started exercising then and I'm proud of how much fitter I have become since. I used to be unable to do any push ups and I take 13+mins to run 2.4km. Nowadays, I can do 25 push ups and run 2.4km in 11.30+~12min! Who knew it was so easy to improve my fitness?

But getting rid of PMO is not that easy, as pretty much everyone here knows. I could only go for a week, maybe two before I relapsed and whenever I relapsed, I binged hard to try to get rid of the awful feeling of breaking a streak I worked so hard on. However, I tried to reduce the number of times I PMO in each month. I used to do it daily, so in January, I aimed to only PMO 15 times, 7 times in February, 3 times in March and never do it again after my birthday at the end of March. It was going well until the end of February though at least I didn't go over 10 times per month.

Unfortunately, even after my birthday, I relapsed a few times. The first time was during a run when my exhibitionist (though that term isn't exactly accurate since I don't actually want anyone to see me) tendencies suddenly arose and haunted me like crazy because it sounded so thrilling to run naked in the dead of night. The second time was more recent. I was on my first ever three-week streak when my sexual urges hit me full force and while I tried fighting them back, they were so strong that I couldn't resist despite me knowing I'll go back to the garbage I was before. All I could do was watch myself regress once more.

I beat myself over the second time and wanted to punish myself with every time I PMO since, so I came up with a punishment system that progressively gets worse, ending with mutilation and suicide (sounds like the Blue Whale game). Well, I only PMO'ed once since (part of my binging from the second relapse), then when I was more rational I abolished that.

And then 30 days later, here I am in monk mode and still going strong! I still have the occasional sexual thought in my head, especially when I sleep. But I once had a dream that I was fapping to hentai on my favorite image board and I stopped myself. When I woke up, my feelings were a mix of those after I fapped and my usual ones during a NoFap streak then I realized it was a dream. I guess it just shows that this time, I have the will and seriousness to stop this madness.

And yes, I'm on monk mode (or a pseudo version of it? I'm only reset my counter when I PMO, not when I so much as get a sexual thought). To me, I know that the sexual thoughts are what lead me into thinking PMO will feel good and ending up actually PMO-ing. Thus, I'm trying to deal with the problem from its roots. I also don't have a girlfriend and I'm not planning to get one ever, as nice as love is often portrayed. Love is just another can of worms to me and I'm quite lacking in many areas so until I fix those, love is out of the picture. But hey, single's life rules!

Also I get less random boners. Yassssssss. It's one of the benefits on NoFap that I can tell you. I have better mental clarity and more energy these days, but that may have been because I get more sleep nowadays. I think NoFap helps me train up though. Each relapse makes me physically weaker somehow. As for being more sociable... meh. All my life I wasn't sociable and so I have like no social skills or social media account even now which further makes it harder to socialize. But at least I try to help out people around me. Idk if I've become less irritable or not since I have a short fuse still. Maybe I have. I don't remember life without PMO. But yes, less random boners. Those seriously suck. Ah and I almost forgot: you don't have to clean up a smelly mess when you don't PMO.

Alright, this intro has been kind of long and this being my first one-month streak, I'm definitely no expert. However, I would like to share some insights from my experiences:

• DO NOT EDGE.
  Everytime you so much as recall past porn materials you "enjoyed", touch your crotch for no reason, or do anything strange that is remotely sex-related or while naked, the false "feel-good" feeling that you get will make you more desperate for PMO and drop your guard against sexual urges. But at least you may still correct yourself before the old PMO-addicted beas within you awakens. If you start edging, you're basically screwed. For people who are using sex to cope, I have no idea how sex will impact your PMO habits, but for people who aren't gonna get laid, I think this is a very very important tip. Of course, avoid the other stuff I mentioned as well; these poisons will only do you harm.
• Anger and hatred at the start of each reboot is INSUFFICIENT; you need WILLPOWER.
  Yes, they are great for starting a new streak. But it won't last. Eventually, the feelings of anger and hatred towards PMO will fade and you will start to feel like "Hey, PMO isn't all that bad." PMO will soon come knocking on your door and the streak you worked so long for ends. But tbh, my own willpower is derived from momentary anger everytime I get a sexual thought and I swear at it (in my mind) until it gets degraded into rubbish and I throw it away. Well, that's the best description I can give lol. I'm not feeling it right now since I don't have a sexual thought.

Well, that's all I got for now. I'll probably go set up a journal next, look around the site a bit, but I won't be coming to this site too often. When trying to stem out my PMO addiction, it's not exactly a good idea to pick up an anti-PMO addiction imo.

Thank you for reading and I'm glad to join you guys on the quest to fight PMO ^^