Yo! I'm new to this. Been trying to top PMO for about 6 months now and the most I've managed was 2 weeks about 3 times. Trying to go clean for 2014 (Failed last night!) I'm not sure if this has been posted about before but I need help. So your lying in bed... You've been lying there for 10 minutes and you can't sleep. You're bored, you're restless and you start to get that feeling in your penis. You try and try to resist the urges but in the end you easily loose the fight. You make excuses 'I'll start tomorrow!' or my personal favourite 'I've got a social event next week, If I jerk it tonight, that gives me 5 days of no PMO and I'll be on fire at the party.' I need to know your tricks for resisting them urges when it comes to lying in bed and being terribly vulnerable to them pornographic urges. That moment when your so tired, you don't even try to fight back! Thanks alot guys, if this has been written about before, I'm sorry for repeating it! Anton.
Hi Anton, welcome. I am sorry to have to feed you this cold, but there are no tricks for resisting the urges. The urges are withdrawals, and if you are quitting porn, you are going to have withdrawals. I feel a lot of us don't understand that we don't merely feel withdrawals after having quit porn for a few days; we feel withdrawals within minutes and hours of our last fix. That is why we constantly come to want porn; it is not like we go through the day not wanting it, but only come to want it a few days after quitting it. If you are a porn addict you constantly want porn until you have gone through the withdrawals, at which point your brain does rebalance and it does become easier. I will say, understand about triggers. I don't know if you are keeping porn completely out of your life, but a lot of guys try this nofap challenge, almost on a whim, but keep living the porn lifestyle, consuming it, looking at it, every day. Can't be done in my opinion. Porn is the real problem, not MO; MO is just a symptom of dopamine addiction aka porn addiction. Porn is the button we push to get that dopamine fix, so porn has to completely go. I am PMO free, porn free, for over 5 months now. I am never going back. It's a drug I will never use again. I say three things: get educated, get tools, and learn to love withdrawals. People get tired of me saying it, but it's the way I got clean. I posted a link if you want to look it over: http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthread.php?2402-Get-educated-get-tools-and-learn-to-love-withdrawals You need tools outside of yourself. Will power alone usually does not work. It did not for me. It takes humility to beat this thing; you have to accept porn is in charge now, and that the only way for you to put yourself back in charge is to put it out of your house, your life, your head, your brain. You have to defriend porn, renounce it, excommunicated it--just get it out of your head. There are two kind of guys in this forum; those who want to keep porn in their lives, but think they can control it, and the other kind; guys who know they cannot control porn, that it is in control of them. There is only one way a porn addict can control porn, and that is get it completely out of their lives. I did it, so unless I am superhuman (and I am not, I am seriously flawed), you can do it to. But be prepared to suffer when your dopamine soaked brain punishes you for not giving it a dopamine fix by pushing the porn button. I am sorry to say it, but if you are not prepared to seriously suffer while quitting porn, you are not prepared to quit porn. I hope this helps. Good luck to you in your journey.
Have you considered meditation. Tis the oldest trick in the book you could say! I personally prefer to think of it as human kinds greatest gift to itself (and you can't get a much better recommendation than that!!) Cant recommend it enough and you will be surprised what a profound effect doing nothing (or more precisely doing without doing) can have on all areas of your life!! There's a guy riding down the street on a horse that's galloping really fast. It looks like he's going somewhere really important. A bystander shouts over, "Hey! Where are you going? " I don't know.", the man replies, "Ask the horse"... The horse is our mind, constantly racing ahead whist we desperately try keep up/figure out where its going etc but meditation affords us the opportunity to 'get' off the horse and to start 'taming' it. So you might want to re-frame the 'bedtime' experience because, as Einstein once said, you will not solve a problem using the same thinking that caused it! Try these threads which are long(ish!) but could help you see things in a different light/help you make the necessary changes etc... http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthread.php?2430-I-think-therefore-I-fap-(!!)-Dealing-with-withdrawal http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthre...d-it-become-a-problem-WHAT-can-we-do-about-it Just suggestion by the way and all perspectives are relative etc, I've been there and I know that just lying back and allowing the urges to wash over and consume you only ends up in rationalization and before you know it your reaching for the tissues!!
Hey Anton, First of all, welcome, and congrats on taking the first steps. I came to NoFap about a week before you, I've been clean since, and I am already feeling the benefits. Regarding being in bed at night, I have a few habits that work for me that might work for you too. Do you use your laptop and or phone for porn and sleep with them within reach of your bed? If so, stop doing that. Leave them in another room, or in your backpack overnight, and do not touch them until the morning when you're showered and ready to face the day. I'm at the point now where if I get a boner in bed, I don't think I would even need porn to get the orgasm. I think my own hand would do it pretty quickly, but I still resist. Normally, I refocus my thoughts on something else, like my schedule for the next day. If refocusing doesn't work, I literally sit up and do pushups right in my bed. After about 20 or 30 I collapse and I'm too exhausted to want to jerk it at all. Pushups might be the quick boner killer technique you're looking for. As for the other two posters in this thread, William is absolutely right about "loving withdrawals." By going through withdrawals you know that your brain is slowly being rebalanced and you're succeeding. Use them to encourage yourself! This logic, which I read a few days ago in that thread William posted, has helped me resist the urge on more than one occassion. And as JiltedJohn said, meditation can be very useful. My public New Year's resolution in to meditate daily (my private one is do quit PMO forever). Its that powerful. I was planning on elaborating on that when I entered this thread, but John pretty much covered everything. Good luck! Stay strong!!
The "loving withdrawals" deal sounds awesome. As for your problem man, physical exertion like push-ups, maybe some sit-ups too, sounds pretty good. Just get yourself physically tired. I like to listen to relaxing, repetitive music as well when I'm finding it hard to sleep. It feels like my thoughts creep on me a lot more easier when it's quiet. Deep house music did the trick for me last night, listened to Random Album Title by deadmau5 last night and it knocked me out. It seems like focusing all my attention on simple sounds drifts me right off to sleep when I feel like its time for bed.
