Omarov keeps up the win!

Omarov

Member
Hi, (please read till the end, I need your help!)

I'm 24 and It's been a tough 3 months of avoiding porn! (precisely 95 days)
First of all, I've been addicted to porn since I was 15. But honestly it wasn't so compelling for me as some of the fellows who say they used to masturbate to porn more than once a day. For me, worst case was from once every other day to once every 2 weeks, furthermore I rarely ever watched videos, I couldn't stand them. I just used porn pics which also sometimes were non nude. So my case is much milder than other guys.
Another thing, I'm still a virgin, my culture only allows sex within marriage and I'm not married yet. So no PIED. I'd get a massive erection just to think about how the first time would be like with my gf.
So yeah, I'm quitting fapping for her. I love her and I know how much she'll find it abhorrent if she knew I used to view porn, so I don't wanna be dishonest to her. Besides, porn and even staring to women is forbidden in my religion, and I'm a little bit religious so...

My main issue now is that I relapsed once on day 88. I couldn't resist thinking about sex whatever I did. I couldn't resist staring at women and I knew that fapping to porn gives me a break from that for some time (and it did, I'm a civil person now). But I decided to not count that relapse first because it was preceded by many mini-relapses (specifically fapping while imagining porn) and secondly, for motivation purposes. I gave myself a break and told myself: If I could do 88 days once, I could do them again.

Here's how the 88 days went: My first goal was to go 2 months nofap. But since porn is the problem (I have nothing against masturbation by itself), I decided to back up a little and enjoy and weekly sin free brief masturbation session. And I'm telling you, it's much easier that way. You can work on detaching fapping from porn first, then take care of fapping alone by prolonging the nofap period gradually.
For me, fapping is only a problem when it's a trigger to view porn. And actually it is. A fellow fapstronaut has written once that you must quit fapping for at least more than a month if you wanna detach it from porn and beat PIED. I failed to do so, so my desire for porn kept increasing incrementally during those 88 days then I lost it for once. Now I know why I relapsed, so I decided to not masturbate next time except on NY eve :)

My next post will be on NY eve. I hope that by this time I wont relapse to either porn or masturbation. I'm currently going hard on myself to avoid my well known triggers (staring, thinking, free time, boredom) and I've been awesome this week. Please encourage me and wait for my next post in 3 weeks!
 
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changemylife

Guest
First of all, it's great that you are not hooked on porn that much and you should take advantages of this and beat this early, before porn has any chance on making you super addicted like me. Keep doing what you're doing cause I think you are on the right path. Peace!
 

Omarov

Member
Thanks for your encouragement! Once you're honest with yourself that you really want to quit then you're on the right path.
 
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changemylife

Guest
The first step is admitting you have a problem. Once you can talk about it, it means you are ready to change it. I've noticed that in all this time when I wasn't ready to quit my addictions, I hid them and didn't talk about them. Even talking about them anonymously on this forum is a step forward in becoming ready. Stay strong 24/7.
 

Omarov

Member
Thanks man :)
I had a strong urge yesterday and my filthy brain's argument was (you relapsed in the middle might as well relapse again and start over), but then I realized that talking about it could be the solution so I signed up to this forum yesterday.
It's much harder doing this alone. I wish I had that idea long ago.
Stay strong!
 
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changemylife

Guest
If you didn't follow the urge then this is a win. Do the same today. One day at a time. You don't want to relapse today. And tomorrow tell yourself the same thing. Don't obsess about "I want to quit for a year" or something like that. Just say "I don't want to relapse today."
 

Omarov

Member
Amen to that! No urges or visualizations today though. Getting used to saying NO to the urge increases your resistance on the long run too.
Today will remain a clean day.
 
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changemylife

Guest
We need to become a wall that, after being hit with a hammer everyday, it builds thick protective layers instead of cracking and falling down.
 

Omarov

Member
Another day without PMO: Check ?
(Q. Do you have any idea whether there's a way I can get a notification when someone posts a reply?)
 

Omarov

Member
I'm at the end of my day today with just one task to complete. I'm basically procrastinating and the reason why I visited the forum now is because I'm feeling strong urges.
Brain likes to give you dirty ideas and I'm having one now which is making me go crazy. Brain is making me think I want to MO once on NY eve WITH porn not without, and it's trying to convince me that it's virtually the same, and that it wont affect my forward trajectory of my successes so far in avoiding porn. But the truth is: THAT IS NOT TRUE. AND I DO NOT WANT TO VIEW PORN! Ugh I hate how terrified I am now. I need every bit of strength and faith on NY eve to avoid relapsing. Screw you brain and your filthy ideas!
I WONT LET IT SLIP THIS TIME!
Reminders:
1- Those urges are not urges to masturbate, they're urges to view porn. Fighting them is what should be done.
2- Brain will start making me like to enjoy triggers. Extra effort should be done to avoid staring, thinking, boredom, killing time on youtube or mobile games.
 
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changemylife

Guest
I am trying to figure out too what to do when strong urges come because I've seen how irrational they make me feel and I don't even think, I act on impulse and before I know, I'm on Internet watching porn. This is a difficult situation but we need to figure out a way to control ourselves.
 

Omarov

Member
That is very true. One other thing I realized too late is that, a key issue in curing your porn addiction is teaching yourself how to really process the idea that you're gonna be living every single day of your life without porn. I realized that you never really shake off the addiction till you make your mind process the idea that it's gonna be forever, and that the drug's days are actually permanently over.
That is real hard to sink in and needs a lot of convincing yourself. I guess smokers have that struggle while quitting too.
 
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changemylife

Guest
I had the same discussion with someone else here on the forum who had said the same thing. Yes, only the though if giving up the drug forever is really scary. Also, for some people, including myself, our addictions numb ourselves from our depression and stuff like that, which comes back when we quit the drug and now we have to deal with it full blown, without using PMO and whatever other addictions we have (I have 3). I have never known how to deal with my mental problems in a normal way and of course now I don't really know either, but I'm doing my best, I'm learning, so this should be good.
My mind refuses to accept 100 percent the thought of quitting the addictions but I have to do it, otherwise I will never get rid of them. In my case, my mind has never being my ally anyway so the last sentence is true. It's a fight between my soul and my mind.
 

Omarov

Member
Dirty ideas continue for second day. I've been having a hard time avoiding visualizations and thinking about sex. It's like whenever I see a normal girl I suddenly lose all motivation towards achieving a porn free mind. It was basically like this for me today: I keep asking myself this question when I'm approaching day 100 (Is that really it? how will I ever be able to conceive the idea of doing away with porn mentality forever? Will I ever stop seeing women as sex objects?). I mean, I've never thought it's gonna be that hard to accept the idea.
I'm really terrified. I've never been that terrified since I decided to quit!
But then I remember that there are tons of barriers preventing a relapse, I've got a lot of big guns to bring in the moment of weakness, one of them is this forum and the tons of support on it. It encourages me to just read people's words of encouragement on other people's threads. Truly amazing.
The question remains: Don't we need to address the porn issue from a wider viewpoint? That is, can one's brain ever truly quit porn addiction without addressing how it essentially views women?
The porn mentality has to do with a lot of things other than craving porn content. It's from how you view ordinary women whether on the streets or other more "sexualized" premises like instagram and video games, to how you view your sexual relation with your partner.
 
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changemylife

Guest
Dirty ideas continue for second day. I've been having a hard time avoiding visualizations and thinking about sex. It's like whenever I see a normal girl I suddenly lose all motivation towards achieving a porn free mind.
I know exactly what you mean as I always go through this all the time.

Is that really it? how will I ever be able to conceive the idea of doing away with porn mentality forever? Will I ever stop seeing women as sex objects?

I wonder this too. I haven't really being aware of this and I haven't given it much thought but now after you've said it, it made me realize the same thing. It's like porn has rearranged my mind. It's definitely made me look at sex and girls from a non-healthy perspective. Actually, being exposed to porn at such an young age, when I was around 12 or 13, I don't know a time when I looked at girls and sex in a healthy way. Right from the beginning, when my hormones got crazy and I wanted to have sex with girls, I masturbated to fantasies of girls I liked from school in porn positions and scenarios.

But then I remember that there are tons of barriers preventing a relapse.

This is true. If I've realized one thing is that the addiction doesn't want to make it easy at all. It reacts violently to your attempt to walk away from it. But I look at it like this: It's terrible living with addictions so no obstacle on the road toward the recovery can be worst than continuing your life as an addict. No matter how hard the recovery is, the addiction is harder and I have to pick one of two and I choose recovery.

The question remains: Don't we need to address the porn issue from a wider viewpoint? That is, can one's brain ever truly quit porn addiction without addressing how it essentially views women?
The porn mentality has to do with a lot of things other than craving porn content. It's from how you view ordinary women whether on the streets or other more "sexualized" premises like instagram and video games, to how you view your sexual relation with your partner.

I think I understand what you mean by this and I don't know either what should be done. Maybe we need some reprogramming but I've no idea what to do about this. If you find out something, let me know.
 

Omarov

Member
Maybe we need some reprogramming but I've no idea what to do about this. If you find out something, let me know.

I've been thinking... What we need might be to carefully widen the scope of our fight. The enemy shouldn't just be porn content. It should be all unhealthy expressions of sexuality and approaches to sex. It might still be a natural thing to be attracted to a random woman sexually, but it should be an essential human capability to decide where to stop, and to be able to do that effectively. That I have yet to learn.
 
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changemylife

Guest
I've been thinking... What we need might be to carefully widen the scope of our fight. The enemy shouldn't just be porn content. It should be all unhealthy expressions of sexuality and approaches to sex. It might still be a natural thing to be attracted to a random woman sexually, but it should be an essential human capability to decide where to stop, and to be able to do that effectively. That I have yet to learn.

This is definitely something I've never thought about.
 

Omarov

Member
I'm staying home today. Though I'm really busy right now I still think about porn a lot. I don't know how to stop. It's making me really nervous and I feel how my brain keeps making a relapse sound like a brilliant idea.
However, another whispering sound remains at the back of my mind. That's what it keeps saying: But you still afterall didn't give yourself the best chance to show your brain that you can actually live without porn. Why don't you restrict masturbation as much as you can? what if your unbearable urges are a side effect for continuing to masturbate whenever you feel like it? Can you just continue your nofap streak and then we can see what we can do after new year's? maybe it would make it harder to get urges, maybe your brain will only then start to fully accept to live a totally normal and happy life without porn.
I guess it only a question of which voice do I prefer to listen to. I keep remembering the stories of people who quit porn.
I'll never forget one sentence a porn quitter wrote once: "I've never been happier my whole life".
I guess the choice is clear.
 
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changemylife

Guest
The brain is used to the drug. It reacts violently when you spend days without it. It goes as far as it can, even "hypnotizing" you and making you believe that you should relapse because it's pleasurable, because it's amazing, because you will have an unbelievable high giving the many days since last time.
But urges will exist all the time if we relapse. You relapse, go through urges again, relapse again and the vicious circle goes on. If we choose not to relapse, we only go through urges once then eventually they will stop. Withdrawal goes away after awhile.
 

Omarov

Member
?You're absolutely right. I guess now as it troubles me the most it means I've actually started confronting the monster for the first time since I decided to quit. And damn it's scary.
But I'll win. I know how to win and I'll never forgive myself if I choose to lose.
Btw, where do you live? If you're in the US or Canada why don't you check FTND (fight the new drug). It's an actual movement that not only helps people recover but spreads education about the harms of porn. It's made out of people with porn addiction past.
Sadly I don't live where I can access them physically. Maybe you can join.
 
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