Starting, day 1.

I have had a serious problem with porn since I was about 14. I doubt a week has gone by without me jacking it to porn. I have just ruined a relationship with a great girl due to my lack of ability to get boners. Getting boners for real sex and performance anxiety has been a problem, on and off ever since my first girlfriend at 18. I'm sure that porno is the problem, because when I'm watching the most depraved shit on the internet, I'm rock hard. This is my first serious attempt to cut porn out completely, including facebook, youtube, craigslist and any other sexually stimulating internet crap.

I'm going to attempt to limit myself to wacking off once a week with no porno. Lets say Sundays and see how that works out. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I intend of posting every day and reporting my progress.

READ THIS WHEN YOU WANT TO START DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLOPE AGAIN.
Here are some of the things porn has brought into my life:
- Living out porn fantasies in real life, e.g. with hookers, which is not legal and through which I've put myself at risk of sexually transmitted diseases multiple times. Waiting for test results after doing something stupid has caused me months of emotional trauma, several times. Other real life porn fantasies aside from hookers were also pursued.
- Ruined relationships (arguably more than once) because I physically couldn't have sex because of ED.
- Escalated to shameful types of porn and had to deny I knew what it was and risked other things. Kept at this for years and years.
- Wasted countless hours of my life, probably running into thousands and thousands of hours where I could have been doing literally anything else that would have been better. Conservatively, 5 hours a week, for 16 years would give me 173 days, nearly half a year of my life looking at porn.
- Developed massive social anxiety and depression to the point where walking into a room of people was like I was being choked around the neck sometimes. After I discovered porn, I basically went from being a fairly okay kid to needing alcohol to function normally in any social situation for most of my adult life. I went through long periods of extreme depression, where the only thing that would make me feel better again was coming home and looking at porn and jacking off (I could almost feel the dopamine running through me).
- Generally over the course of many years been made to feel utterly shameful by the above actions and the untold negative consequences of porn.

Once you set foot back on the slope you are fucked. Progress has been made, but you just can't go anywhere near this stuff.

Porn is the worst thing in your life by far. It needs to go.

From: http://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/action-or-not-have-you-actually-prepared-for-it.3549/

Create a decisional balance sheet.

- Emotionally: What are your emotions before you watch porn? What are your emotions after you end watching porn?

Before: excited, heightened sense of surroundings, arousal, intrigue.

After: Shame, self loathing, a sense of helplessness that I can't stop doing something that's hurting me and the people around me.

- Relationship: You might have a significant other (SO) in your life. How would your SO react if she would find out about your porn use? Or if she found out, what was her reaction? Describe her (possible) feelings. Would she agree and join you in watching porn together? Would it lead to break up?

I did have a significant other. I don't know the answers to the other questions, but I doubt she'd be all that surprised.

- Family: How do you think that your parents would react if they knew you are a porn addict?

I have no idea.

- Socially: Did you porn habit have a negative influence on your social life? How (be specific)?

Yes, there's plenty of occasions  (i.e. yesterday) where I could have gone something social and instead I stayed in, jerked it to porn and lost all motivation to leave the house.

- Financially: Did you find yourself spending money on porn? How much in the last month/year/in total?

I do not spend money on porn but I'm sure the lost time is valuable.

- Work/School: How did porn affect your effectiveness in accomplishing tasks at school or work?

I probably negatively affected my performance in college.

- Spiritually: Did you find that porn is an impediment in connecting or your relationship with Divinity? Is pornography use compatible with your spiritual believes?

I do not have spiritual beliefs. But I am stalked by the depression inside my head.

- Sexually: Do you suffer from porn induced delayed ejaculation (DE) or erectile dysfunction (ED)? Have your preferences in women or sexual activities changed since you started watching porn?

Yes I suffer from both porn induced ED and delayed ejaculation. Neither of which are an issue when porn is present. My sexual tastes have become ever more extreme and depraved because of porn.

My advice is: start slowly, but decisively.
Don't overwhelm yourself with the decision of quitting porn from your life, either mentally (thinking about it all the time) or with attitudes (drastically changing anything, impulsively). It WILL generate enourmous ammounts of unnecessary stress. Trust me on this: a reboot is not, necessarily, an extremely painful, hard process. It just takes dedication and the will to do it.

A complimentary advice to that would be: it is anything, but easy.
Taking that in mind, do your homework. You'll be fine, since everyone knows their own way around problems. Browsing the forums is a good start, but so could be any other. If you're absolutely unsure of where to start, the guy above me just posted a link and some words (edit: turns out that was you! and already making some progress, haha), and I can foward to you a PM I got from an older forum member, it is also helpful. One thing I would recomment though, regardless of your inclinations and the paths your choose to deal with your own reboot: read the Your Brain On Porn e-book. Myself, I bought it from the website real cheap, had it printed and been reading it ever since, since I prefer reading on actual paper. But regardless of what path you take, one thing is key: self-observance, reflexion, meditation, contemplation, experimenting.

To sum it up in one sentence: if you don't give up, you will make it.

Hey canttugwonttug,

Welcome to the community. I'm new (joined yesterday) as well and I'm finding all sorts of motivation/inspiration from reading others stories. I'm looking forward to being on this journey with you. It is not going to be easy, as I've discovered time and time again, but I think with this large of a support community we can do it. Post if you have any questions or need any strategies, the people on here are great!.

Thanks for the support fellows! So far, no major issues, but I probably shouldn't congratulate myself too much yet haha, lets see how I'm doing in a few more days.

almost 2 days done. good start buddy. just remain calm and continue with ease and be cautious too. avoid triggers and fantasy.

Getting towards the end of day 3. Definitely getting a little more difficult today, but still feel like I'm hanging in there without any huge difficulty and still feeling very motivated to succeed. Thanks for the support friends.

Every time you have an urge and manage to find it off you will feel great about yourself the next day rather then like shit.

Try taking up exercise if you dont, this alone is what I give credit to 75% of my accomplishments.  Anytime Im upset I go take it out in the gym and I always feel better after.  Not to mention Im getting buff and strong as hell which is nice.

Look up how to do relaxation breathing exercises (mediation) as well.

Thanks dude, I too have been hitting the gym hard. In there pretty much every day at the moment. Definitely something else to focus on. All in all I feel like I'm hanging in there okay. Booze at the weekend will be hurdle if that happens, will be very interested to see if I can make it through...

Main thing about booze, in my opinion, is the same as other drugs/escapes/overstimulation (junk food, sweets): it all "feeds" the addiction. Cuz all addiction is merely you trying to escape something really, really shitty in a very, very fast and immediate way. So, in order to really reboot your brain to feel life as normal, I'd advise, cut back a little bit on everything that is overstimulating to the brain: lots of social media websites, smartphones with tons of apps, even TV and videogames, and junk food, and too much intense partying, heavy drugging, etc etc etc... You get the picture. Instead, if you can enjoy a sunday afternoon with a handful of friends playing board games or talking nonsense, or even a pleasant talk with girls, or something more stimulating like a hike, road trip, going out, all is valid as long as it's not overdoing it. The point is to regain control of your life. How can you do it, if you keep hopping from tree to tree, like a starving monkey, desperatly searching for food? Take your time, revaluate your priorities and actions, take your attitudes towards life and others and yourself in consideration, all of this is valid in this process.

Just remember, if a big, dark cloud starts to lay low in your mind (some rebooters report heavy depression times) KEEP IN MIND THAT IT'S PART OF THE REBOOTING PROCESS, AND THAT IT'S GONNA PASS. Because it can get reeeeaaally overwhelming, and trust me when I say this, cuz I'm a guy who's went through a lot of psychic hell through my life, more than just a couple of times. It WILL fool you into thinking all is 100% absolute s*** and that you are completely hopeless and doomed, FOR LIFE. But it's just your brain. Funny, innit?

But then again, it might not happen at all. Depression is just one side of the coin, anxiety is the other. That being the reason why every other rebooter who doesn't experience depression, struggles with heavy, compulsive obsessions towards porn use and end up playing tug of war with their urges, it can get quite nasty. The downers, I'd say it's all about strenght of will, but not to pull the rope harder, but to hang in there long enough. More like endurance, rather than strenght. Guess that's what I have to learn.

What would you know? I ended up learning something, here! haha. Always been the strong-willed guy, bending trees and steel to my will. Never been able to sustain a storm longer than 1 day, though... Maybe that's the reason I fell in this PMO trap in the first place; can't sustain stress. Hah.

Thx, dude. lol
Really, it helped.
Guess we really are all in this together, huh

I'm thinking, maybe discipline is key to whitstanding long-lasting storms?

I guess my main worry is I've always found it pretty hard to meet girls totally sober. Obviously I should try to address my issues with booze too and perhaps this is the perfect opportunity to do that. Anyway, I'm feeling definite drop in urges today, whatever that might mean, all in all I'm keeping going okay though!

MO'ed yesteday, but no P.

I'm not sure what the consensus is on that being a bad thing. I know its something that could probably easily spiral out of control. I should probably monitor the situation and try to keep it well under control. I made it almost a week this time, so maybe I should aim to make it 10 days now....

MO brings lust, fantasy and more cravings.
so i am in favor of avoiding MO completely in reboot.
it brings depression too.
chaser effect as well.
http://yourbrainonporn.com/what-chaser

So, I got drunk yesterday and ended up looking at some picture of hookers. I didn't MO (so technically didn't PMO), but I still feel like I need to reset the counter. Back to square one I guess.

Thanks for your support brah. I think you are right!

mtaha2015 said:

MO brings lust, fantasy and more cravings.
so i am in favor of avoiding MO completely in reboot.
it brings depression too.
chaser effect as well.
http://yourbrainonporn.com/what-chaser

Click to expand...

I am glad you reset your counter and you are back on track.wish you success. don't binge. now stay here. avoid drinking as well.

I think another problem with drinking is that when hungover, you feel like shit, can't get out of bed and end up MOing endlessly.

I'm definitely beginning to suspect that MOing with fantasy is, while probably not as bad as MOing to P, still going to be something that slows down or completely screws up this process. I don't think there's anything natural about wacking it 4 times a day while thinking about depraved shit.

Booze is the enemy.

Hey,

congrats on admitting you need to get this evil porn out of your life.

you have to get into that mindset that you will never do it again and wenever urges comeup repress them.

one more thing DO NOT EDGE it is the WORSE THING YOU CAN DO!!!

you have to kill the PMO my friend. you have to reach 120 days without PMO improve the lifestyle, remove all sexual thoughts and then after the reboot is complete reintroduce REAL SEX with a REAL WOMEN. and slowly rewire youself to real girls.

you have to eliminate PORN FOREVER otherwise ull be on this forum for years and will go round and round in circles relapsing.

gather the will power

I'm feeling fairly optimistic about things. No desire to look at porn today. I think since the stark realization of how much it has fucked me up, staying the away from it (at least when sober) is actually not all that difficult.