The only thing that is constant is change

[NewParadigm]

When you stay in a dark room for many years and finally decide to come out of it and see the bright light of sun outside, then initially you will find it hard and painful to open your eyes and let them adjust to the brightness outside and there will be moments when you would feel so uncomfortable that you would want to return to your dark room, but if you don't give up easily and show perseverance, you will start to feel comfortable and blissful after some time and you would not even think once about returning to that dark room ever again in which you always felt so helpless, weak and miserable. Your world will change completely.

Pornography is the dark room in which my mind has been trapped for more than 8 years but now I feel like a change is coming soon - A powerful change that will finally free me from the vicious cycle of PMO addiction and all the negative emotions that are part of it. During the course of the last 8 years I've gathered an ocean of knowledge regarding my own psyche and how PMO addiction effects it. I have a very clear idea in my mind about what I need to do to reclaim my life and start living like a normal healthy person but the only thing that I've been lacking is the WILL to succeed.

Deep down I understand that you cannot heal from PMO addiction in a fortnight and that it is a process which takes time and effort and above all; the WILL to succeed.

Here are a list of things that I have started doing recently and which are helping me immensely in my goal to stay clean and sober:

• • I have completely stopped drinking all caffeinated drinks. I would highly recommend people who are struggling with PMO addiction to stop drinking caffeinated beverages and alcohol because they diminish the healing capacity of the nervous system and irritate the prostate gland which in-turn can create unhealthy urges and arouse you to the point of relapse. I have also noticed improvement in my sleep quality and my energy levels through out the day ever since I quit caffeinated beverages. My skin looks healthy and hydrated too and there is a glow on my face. The pain in my prostate gland which was very annoying has also subsided to a great extent ever since I stopped drinking caffeinated beverages to beat the blues after PMO relapse. I believe there is a strong link between prostate problems and caffeine.
  • Getting good quality sleep at night and waking up early in the morning. Its not just the Quantity of sleep but the Quality of sleep that is more important. When I do PMO at night, I wake up next morning feeling absolutely tired and exhausted despite sleeping for 8 hours.We spend 1/3 of our lives sleeping! getting good quality sleep is important for healing and recovery. During sleep we recover from the stresses that we have endured during the day.

• • I do light jogging or walk in the morning for 1 or 1 and a half hour and drink plenty (but not excessive because it can disturb electrolyte balance in body which is harmful) of water to flush out all toxins from the body. I plan to lose 15 kgs before the end of this year but I am not going to overload myself because right now my nervous system is healing from the ill-effects of PMO and putting more stress on it can have harmful effects.

• • Eat Wisely! I eat 3 times in a day. I have noticed that when I eat full stomach I get unhealthy urges and feel drowsy so I eat only healthy stuff and in a limited amount. It takes time and practise before you can correctly decide how much you should eat in a meal.

• • 'An Empty Mind Is A Devil's Workshop' I didn't understand the meaning of this proverb when it was taught to me when I was in the 5th grade but I understood its deep meaning during my struggle with PMO addiction. It is important to keep your mind busy and preoccupied with work or a healthy hobby and not just sit ideal all the time because the mind has the tendency to wander into some wrong direction ( example fantasising about pornographic videos and images that you have seen) when we don't use it or focus it in doing something productive.

I will be regularly writing about my progress here and share some tips which can help others struggling with PMO addiction in recovering.

 

[D . J .]

Welcome to NoFap where you are amongst friends who are here to encourage you and sometimes challenge you but not judge you.

The enemy is here to steal, kill and destroy. What are your current strategies for combating the enemy called PMO?

 

[NewParadigm]

After struggling with PMO addiction for so many years I have come to the conclusion that PMO addiction calls for a change on a very deep level. In my opinion its almost impossible to overcome PMO addiction by constantly thinking about it all the time as if your whole existence revolves around your addiction. It is said that 'the more you think about something the more power you are giving to it and the more you are going to think about it until it becomes the ONLY thing your mind keeps thinking about'. We cannot let PMO hijack our mind to the point that we keep dreading about relapse.



I strongly believe in this quote by Aristotle. Don't make overcoming porn addiction like a goal of your life, instead focus on other areas of your life which you have been ignoring for too long and in which you need to improve. This way you will focus all of your energy on new habits and other things so that your mind won't get the time to be distracted by porn or think about it constantly which in-turn will slowly loosen the grip of porn on your mind until you will shed it completely just like you shed and throw away old clothes.

Pornography is a very unhealthy, perverted and distorted representation of human sexuality. Sex is not a dirty thing and how could it be? It is through the natural act of sex that a NEW LIFE is created but its pornography that corrupts the meaning of sex and makes its look like the nastiest thing in the world with all the immoral and downright disgusting acts that you see porn stars doing . For those of you who have never been in a healthy relationship with a nice woman, I'd like to tell you that sex would just be one small part of the whole relationship equation you will form with woman. There would be many more important factors in relationship equation like Love, Trust, Compatibility, Faith, Togetherness, Mutual Responsibility, Care etc. The 100 billion dollar porn industry is thriving and booming because their principle for success is very simple which is making porn so familiar that it becomes a normal thing in society. Daniel Kahneman who is a behavioural economist and a noble prize winner said once:

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.” - Daniel Kahneman

One of the most harmful effects of pornography that I have observed is that it corrupts the way we see and perceive woman in our minds. The confusion that is born in the mind regarding what a woman really is and what are her desires
and expectations in a relationship is prevalent in mostly those people who don't get many opportunities to interact with woman in real life and have been lonely for very long. Such people are not able to form a healthy opinion and understanding of the psyche of woman and many of them turn to porn and other corrupt sources of media that disseminate toxic information.