restorationjunkie
Member
Hello fellow rebooters!
I have been recovering from this addiction for nearly a year now. I am not completely healed yet but I am currently in a lengthy flat line phase and decided it is time to tell my story and get a little more involved in this community. I would say looking back I started around the age of 14 with this crap.
I guess we all start by sharing our stories so it is here I will begin. I am 27 years old and I have had a hand full of short term relationships. Nothing serious or meaningful (longest being roughly three - four months) and as hard of a pill as it was to swallow why this has been the case, learning the truth about my problem sparked much hope in me. Last year I suffered a major physical injury at a rec league ice hockey game. I Spiral fractured my right femur and a woman I didn't expect had interest in me (who I think is very attractive) came to my side during recovery. As one can imagine I was suffering depression, anxiety and brain fog leading up to this point from porn addiction (I just had no idea it was the cause at this point). Breaking the strongest bone in your body certainly doesn't help these feelings. This was a year ago or there about.
As time went on we grew closer and I could not keep it up during intimacy. I hurt this woman and was very confused and hurt myself as to why I couldn't be present with my emotions or feel any libido with a beautiful woman. It was the worst feeling I have ever had to process in my life. I knew I deeply cared for her and found her very attractive and something else was going on here. So I booked an appointment with a psychiatrist who initially shed light on porn use as the potential culprit. This was in the middle of last September, it was the beginning of this climb. After doing some digging online I have come across Gabes videos and website here as well as nofap. I immediately quit porn knowing it was destroying my life, though I struggled to knock off fapping without it until this March. As time went on and I returned to work I was hit with intense withdrawal symptoms. My depression got much worse, my anxiety spiked through the roof with multiple panic attacks (Two of which were very scary and felt like heart attacks) and I began to worry about everything to an extreme extent. I had my last major panic attack around March, which was when I decided I needed to take things a step further and get on the wagon of hard mode. Funny how that works? Since March I have only fapped a hand full of times and have noticed the following benefits.
-Slowing improving sleep quality
-Feeling more calm and less irritable
-More focus
-Far more social comfort and confidence (Not that I struggled too much with this before but I feel much better now)
-A greater enjoyment in small every day things in life at a time I was working 56 hour weeks. I am happier than I have been in years!
-More motivation to focus my energy on healthy eating and fitness
-Improving interest in women (Not the ones on a screen, never again!)
-Slow but noticeable reductions in withdrawal symptoms ( I feel mostly fine, at times lazy and have trouble sleeping but no more depression, brain fog or anxiety really - June 13th this year)
As of now I am nearly one year free of watching any porn and will continue to be for a life time. It took longer to reduce and eliminate fapping (which I am still working on). When I made that first try on 90 days of hard mode I made huge progress, time to go for another 90 and another if I must. I feel much better but there are things I have gathered from other peoples recovery stories that I am going to try. I am going to keep working out and cut out as much t.v and video games as I can as I believe gaming can have dopamine hits that has probably slowed my progress down. I have found a few books on self help ideas and taken up meditation for 10-15 mins a day. As for logged recovery time I am only counting the days since this March. I felt a huge difference trying hard mode, clearly our brains need some time away from "O" all together to heal from this. I have opened up to a couple people in my life about this and I am working on the courage to tell more in time. I am in a flat line right now and it looks like I will be for months yet. This is okay with me, I have learned to be comfortable with it by reading up on it. Cheers to the next few months of recovery!
Porn free - 305 days as of today
Best of luck to all of us!
I have been recovering from this addiction for nearly a year now. I am not completely healed yet but I am currently in a lengthy flat line phase and decided it is time to tell my story and get a little more involved in this community. I would say looking back I started around the age of 14 with this crap.
I guess we all start by sharing our stories so it is here I will begin. I am 27 years old and I have had a hand full of short term relationships. Nothing serious or meaningful (longest being roughly three - four months) and as hard of a pill as it was to swallow why this has been the case, learning the truth about my problem sparked much hope in me. Last year I suffered a major physical injury at a rec league ice hockey game. I Spiral fractured my right femur and a woman I didn't expect had interest in me (who I think is very attractive) came to my side during recovery. As one can imagine I was suffering depression, anxiety and brain fog leading up to this point from porn addiction (I just had no idea it was the cause at this point). Breaking the strongest bone in your body certainly doesn't help these feelings. This was a year ago or there about.
As time went on we grew closer and I could not keep it up during intimacy. I hurt this woman and was very confused and hurt myself as to why I couldn't be present with my emotions or feel any libido with a beautiful woman. It was the worst feeling I have ever had to process in my life. I knew I deeply cared for her and found her very attractive and something else was going on here. So I booked an appointment with a psychiatrist who initially shed light on porn use as the potential culprit. This was in the middle of last September, it was the beginning of this climb. After doing some digging online I have come across Gabes videos and website here as well as nofap. I immediately quit porn knowing it was destroying my life, though I struggled to knock off fapping without it until this March. As time went on and I returned to work I was hit with intense withdrawal symptoms. My depression got much worse, my anxiety spiked through the roof with multiple panic attacks (Two of which were very scary and felt like heart attacks) and I began to worry about everything to an extreme extent. I had my last major panic attack around March, which was when I decided I needed to take things a step further and get on the wagon of hard mode. Funny how that works? Since March I have only fapped a hand full of times and have noticed the following benefits.
-Slowing improving sleep quality
-Feeling more calm and less irritable
-More focus
-Far more social comfort and confidence (Not that I struggled too much with this before but I feel much better now)
-A greater enjoyment in small every day things in life at a time I was working 56 hour weeks. I am happier than I have been in years!
-More motivation to focus my energy on healthy eating and fitness
-Improving interest in women (Not the ones on a screen, never again!)
-Slow but noticeable reductions in withdrawal symptoms ( I feel mostly fine, at times lazy and have trouble sleeping but no more depression, brain fog or anxiety really - June 13th this year)
As of now I am nearly one year free of watching any porn and will continue to be for a life time. It took longer to reduce and eliminate fapping (which I am still working on). When I made that first try on 90 days of hard mode I made huge progress, time to go for another 90 and another if I must. I feel much better but there are things I have gathered from other peoples recovery stories that I am going to try. I am going to keep working out and cut out as much t.v and video games as I can as I believe gaming can have dopamine hits that has probably slowed my progress down. I have found a few books on self help ideas and taken up meditation for 10-15 mins a day. As for logged recovery time I am only counting the days since this March. I felt a huge difference trying hard mode, clearly our brains need some time away from "O" all together to heal from this. I have opened up to a couple people in my life about this and I am working on the courage to tell more in time. I am in a flat line right now and it looks like I will be for months yet. This is okay with me, I have learned to be comfortable with it by reading up on it. Cheers to the next few months of recovery!
Porn free - 305 days as of today
Best of luck to all of us!
