If not now, when?

I haven't been here in years so I thought it would be better to start fresh

I'm a porn addict but mainly I am a chat and fantasy addict. I have had some form of intermittent PIED since I was a teenager. Long before I knew what it meant. My first attempts at sex were failures and I knew on some level porn was the reason. I was addicted to watching lesbian stuff. Real girls as attracted as I was didn't move me the same way. Once I cut back on watching VHS tapes, eventually I settled in and my sex life became "normal" but It always lingered somewhere in the background. I would binge on occasion, but I knew having real sex and relationships rested on me keeping these impulses in check. For over a decade it was a success.

Once high speed internet entered my life, that balance was up ended. Chat rooms became my demon. Without getting too much into the pathetic details it again revolved around lesbians. The ups and downs of pretending to be someone else were both euphoric and horrific. The intensity of the dopamine highs, and the soul crushing lows of coming back to reality.
My ED came back to humiliate me again and I have still not recovered.

A few years ago, when I discovered ybop and nofap, I realized the changes that were going on in my brain, and made an attempt to rewire. I have had a couple streaks of over a month here and there. I think the longest being about 55 days. I always like myself more on these runs. But at some point I settled in on the habit of staying clean during the week and slipping on weekends. I looked at being clean as a resource of feeling more energy and on top of my game, and at some point lost focus of my original goal of rewiring, kicking the can down the road.

For the past decade or more I have avoided so many opportunities at relationships, or even dates knowing I wasn't "ready". A couple months ago I found myself avoiding yet another opportunity with a woman I was interested in out of fear of ED.

I kept telling myself "IF NOT NOW, WHEN?", and I have been clean since that day. I'm on day 51 of hardmode. By the end of this week it will be the longest I have ever gone without porn, chat and fantasy and MO. Time to finally fix this broken brain.

If you made it this far. Thank you so much for reading. I still have a long way to go.

Stay strong my friend. you are doing great, and you will thank yourself later.

NewVerse said:

I still have a long way to go.

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We all have a long way to go. Glad to have you here.

Tomy & Bob, thank you both very much

Day 52 tonight. 59 if i count my last O which will be my longest without ever.
Morning wood is off and on which is kind of a big thing for me because I haven't had it it years.

The reason I consider it 52 and not 59 days is the night I stopped I had just returned home from a party. Feeling good after 7 days clean, I decided to blow that good energy and started my usual chat hunt. In the middle of that, a woman I was talking to that night who I had been interested in for quite a while contacted me and expressed interest. Out of fear of PIED I had to find an excuse to turn her away. She is very close to my circle of friends, and the thought of the humiliation of not being able to perform was too frightening. Her and I are still in contact and things remain a possibility but it is not about her

The fact that this opportunity presented itself while I was sitting in front of a computer with my not even erect dick in hand typing with the other, pretending to be someone else, someone else of another gender no less (This is pure fantasy. I have no desire to be a female) even typing this feels like the most pathetic thing ever . Normally in situations like this it draws me further into PMO in isolation but I had such an enough is enough feeling that I didn't even finish. I closed everything and went to sleep and decided to get serious about this thing. Things can't go on this way. I want myself back.

Day 53.

I don't know how much morning wood is a sign of recovery but it has to be a positive thing since I don't remember having it at all the last few years except maybe once on a similar streak. It's now been a daily occurrence. I'll wake up at some point during the night rock solid. it's a good feeling.

Weekdays are always easier for me as far as urges are concerned. I had to cut back considerably on Instagram, and when I'm on there it's hard to avoid the rabbit hole of attractive women. When urges struck last week, Instagram was the culprit.

I'm trying to exercise and meditate daily. Slowly adjusting my diet. So far so good.

Day 56. No P, no M, no fantasy, no O. Longest ever for me!

The longest I had ever gone before this was 54 days 2 years ago. That time, I had actually been plotting a relapse in my head for weeks, but hadn't done it because I knew I had to attend an old friend's wedding and wanted to be on top of my game socially. Nearly everyone else was coupled up at this wedding. At least it seemed that way. There were certain fun activities at the reception that were kind of geared towards couples. I felt so uncomfortable, and down on myself, and tired of faking it, that I literally snuck out during the reception. I went home and binged for a day and a half. Needless to say I felt like complete garbage when I was done.

I'm in a better place this time around, but Saturdays are always difficult because it's when I have the most free time on my hands. There is also a faint voice inside of me asking me WHEN are we getting back to normal? I my case "normal" meaning fantasy. I'm drowning it out as best as I can and trying to keep myself busy. I meditated today, I worked out, i did stuff for my family, I'm going out for a bit soon because the worst place I can be is home.

Oward and upward, friends. Fantasies aren't life.

NewVerse said:

Fantasies aren't life.

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You are so right... and it is so difficult to change.

But we are changing.

Peace

Day 58

Made it through the weekend. As with last weekend, it's always the most difficult. A couple occasions thoughts of previous fantasies break through and cloud my brain. i get that very slight dopamine rush, and quickly try to redirect. In one case it was just a shot on a TV show of an attractive woman's collarbone and it sent my mind off remembering something from an intense chat. Another time while working out, another one crept into my head. Again, I had to redirect reminding myself it's not real life.

I'm not much for internet blockers or censoring my content. It only makes me obsess over trying to get around them. I'm stubborn about giving up instagram. I absolutely need to self sensor myself on instagram from browsing in dangerous territory. This I CAN do but have yet to do.

I don't know if I am in flatline because I never really have understood flatline. I will say that last weekend when fantasies crept into my head my MW decreased and during the week when I stayed busy MW was back in full force. The last 2 days have been nothing at all. Again I do not know how relevant MW even is but I have looked it it as a measure of progress though this streak. If this pattern continues, I suppose I will have my answer.

Thanks for your story.  It feels good to know others understand how difficult this is.

Day 60 - Uncharted territory

I have a busy weekend planned ahead so barring any changes there's a good chance I will be in the clear until next weekend. That isn't to say I should let my guard down. instagram images continue to be a habit i need to curb.

I don't know what my ultimate goal here is aside from overcoming PIED and getting back to actual human relationships with women. I am not under the delusion that I will never PMO again forever and I do not necessarily see that as a goal. I do know I want to not WANT to do it. I want to strip it of all its power over me.

I also don't want a year or two from now to look back thinking about that time I once was 60/70/80 days clean and trying to get back to where I am today. This may be a high point now, but far from where I want to be.

I appreciate you sharing.  I have found that weekends can be hard on me as well.  Anytime I have alone with myself is a bit dangerous.  I'm impressed you have gone so long!

30yearsgone and Jasonsjunk thank you both.

@30yearsgone, thank you. I sometimes wonder how many people I interact with are going through this. Even other single guys my age who have been single for such a long time like myself. I could just be projecting  or they could be going through something similar. There is no way to know I suppose.

@jasonsjunk1975, weekends and vacations have always been hard for me. Whenever I have time off, say if it was a week I would spend he first 2 or 3 days binging and the rest trying to keep busy to make up for the time I wasted. My pattern for the past 2 plus years has been clean all week only to fall on the weekend. It's very rare I would PMO during the week, and when I did i'd feel crappy. That has been both a good and a bad thing because I would binge harder on the weekend. Nothing like going back to work on Monday and being asked how was your weekend knowing I spent most of it in PatheticLand.

I will say that it does get easier  as time goes on. Trying to form new daily habits. I used to MO every single day at least once because it's just what I did! If I skipped a day, I was simply too busy that day. Now MO during the week is nearly a foreign idea to me. Trying to carry that over to the weekends is more of a challenge but working so far. I'm also fed up with this whole thing. It has cost me too much. The streak itself has also acted as incentive for me. With all of that said, I can not get overconfident. My addiction is still there ready to pounce the first chance it gets.

NewVerse,

You are doing great!  Keep up the good work!  Remember One fall to PMO is not one fall but a marathon that's hard to come back from. You can beat PMO once and for all you are almost there! 

Day 62

Sometime late tonight will be 70 days since my last full PMO.
I had a vivid dream last night of being intimate with a new girlfriend and failing. Making out and kept trying to focus on her instead of failure, then having that moment where I had to just say it's not going to work. In the dream it seemed established we had been successful a few times before that, and I was at least happy for that, but still wasn't there yet. It felt so real because it's the nightmare I have experienced too many times. Including my very first and last attempts.

I often have a recurring dream that comes after a binge. It is always a different variation of me being high up usually on a building, then suddenly the ladder is gone and I don't know how to get back down. Sometimes it's a wall but the situation is always the same. It seems clear it is about me not knowing how to come back from this. I haven't had that dream in the past couple months so perhaps I am making progress in my dreams .

Have a nice weekend everyone. Stay clean. Your Monday self will be grateful.

NewVerse,

The dreams can be very dangerous, only if you dwell on them.  In the past when I have rebooted and had a nice run, it was those dreams when I dwelled on them that caused me to fall back into PMO.  I had this dream about 30 days ago and it was so vivid and seemed so real, in the dream I fell to PMO and the dream was trying to convince me it was inevitable so why fight it.  I had this dream before in the past when I was on reboot and it caused me to give up and fall to PMO.  Not this time, I saw it for what it was and refused to even think about it. 

Congrats on hitting 70 days free, you are doing great!

Rex said:

NewVerse,

The dreams can be very dangerous, only if you dwell on them.  In the past when I have rebooted and had a nice run, it was those dreams when I dwelled on them that caused me to fall back into PMO.  I had this dream about 30 days ago and it was so vivid and seemed so real, in the dream I fell to PMO and the dream was trying to convince me it was inevitable so why fight it.  I had this dream before in the past when I was on reboot and it caused me to give up and fall to PMO.  Not this time, I saw it for what it was and refused to even think about it. 

Congrats on hitting 70 days free, you are doing great!

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Thank you Rex! I appreciate the encouragement. I'm not terribly concerned with falling to a dream, though I have had the dreams you speak of where I am binging. Not so much the act, but being in chat. I do have an occasional "nightmare" - again, this usually only happens when I'm binging - that my loved ones and co workers find out about my fetishes and chat habits. I would say it is one of my biggest fears in life. I do fear those wet dreams people speak of. That has never happened to me ever. I just don't want it killing my progress!

I do think it is funny that i woke up with MW after a dream about not being able to get it up.

Day 64

(71 days since my last O) Had a fun and productive weekend. My same stubborn habits with instagram brought on a few cravings but not to the point I even considered PMO. I may try that rubber band thing that Remington22 suggested in his post. Snapping my wrist when I'm looking at something that could trigger me. It can't hurt, except for literally!
I have found that the longer I am clean, the weaker the cravings are, and the less power they have over me. Again, I know this can change on a dime. I have no desire to censor away my life and regulate the type of movies and television I watch. I realize this is helpful to some people, along with internet blockers and such, and I say if it works for you, please continue. I am all for everyone doing what ever works for them. All of our addictions differ in type and severity and there is no one size fits all solution. For example, for me seeing a scantily clad female may not trigger anything in me, but someone saying a phrase in a conversation that reminds me of a chat can set me off. It usually isn't something even sexually charged, it's anything that can take me there. There is nothing I can do about this. So for me I need to be Sam Malone in the bar in order for this to work.

NewVerse said:

Day 64

(71 days since my last O) Had a fun and productive weekend. My same stubborn habits with instagram brought on a few cravings but not to the point I even considered PMO. I may try that rubber band thing that Remington22 suggested in his post. Snapping my wrist when I'm looking at something that could trigger me. It can't hurt, except for literally!
I have found that the longer I am clean, the weaker the cravings are, and the less power they have over me. Again, I know this can change on a dime. I have no desire to censor away my life and regulate the type of movies and television I watch. I realize this is helpful to some people, along with internet blockers and such, and I say if it works for you, please continue. I am all for everyone doing what ever works for them. All of our addictions differ in type and severity and there is no one size fits all solution. For example, for me seeing a scantily clad female may not trigger anything in me, but someone saying a phrase in a conversation that reminds me of a chat can set me off. It usually isn't something even sexually charged, it's anything that can take me there. There is nothing I can do about this. So for me I need to be Sam Malone in the bar in order for this to work.

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NewVerse,

The key is to know what triggers you and stay away from them.  There are always those times when you can't avoid a trigger and you learn how to change your mind's thought process and/or then get out of the situation as soon as possible.  There's also a change in your thinking over time that helps in situations where you see a pretty woman in public, you no longer look and think lustfully about her but realize she is pretty but see her as a person.  PMO is a lot like alcoholism, you can't take just one drink and if one sits at a bar too often, the chances of having another drink with alcohol increases substantially.  PMO is like fall off a cliff, you don't want to stand anywhere near the edge of the cliff, because the likelihood of a fall to PMO increases greatly the closer you get to the edge of the cliff. 

I agree with you, Internet filters for me don't work.  I always found ways around them when I wanted to bypass them.  For some people they have worked wonders.  I stay away from R-rated movies or TV programs with sexuality references/themes and nudity, even when I look away from the screen during sex scenes or nudity and mute it, I found that it seemed to weaken me in my battle.  It's the repeated weakening over time that in the past has broken me down which eventually led to me to fall back into PMO. When I watch TV and movies, I watch the cleaner stuff now.  As the old saying goes, garbage in = garbage out.

The best tool, I have found in this battle is prayer.  When I pray three Rosaries a day, the urges go away and when they do hit they have virtually no power.  When I stop praying or only pray one Rosary, I notice the urges begin to increase in intensity.  And then I go back to praying 3 Rosaries a day and then I am back on auto pilot where it's smooth sailing and virtually no urges.

Great work on staying clean, keep up the good work.  I am praying for you...

 

Thank you Rex

While I agree identifying triggers is key, because of the chat thing some of my triggers simply involve every day conversation. I don't even know what they are until it comes (I can't even think of one now which is a good thing!) but let's say hypothetically someone in a random conversation says "rainy night" and it reminds me of some intense chat, those memories will come flooding in. I can't really avoid conversation so all I can do is master redirecting those thoughts. So far I have been able to do that quite well, by either focusing on my goals in this whole thing, or how much better I feel now and how far I've come, or reminding myself what those fantasies actually are in REALITY which is me sitting alone in a stuffy room jerking it.

Sexual content in movies have never affected or triggered me but if they trigger you you are absolutely correct in avoiding them. Instagram is another story for me all together and is a trigger I can avoid. Looking at beautiful women is not my primary activity on instagram. I enjoy the photography and animals and cars and other hobbies, and funny things, but instagram's algorithm is so sensitive to the point where it knows not only what you hit the like button for but how long you linger on a picture. It knows exactly what type of women I am attracted to and caters that to my suggestions. It's crazy! I have no plans of deleting or deactivating it. I think instead i need to retrain the algorithm the way I am retraining my brain to focus on other things

I am not a particularly religious guy however I have no issue with anyone who is, which includes many of the people I care about the most in this world. I think it's wonderful that prayer is helpful for you, and sincerely appreciate your prayers nonetheless. It sounds like you are on a great run as well!

NewVerse said:

Thank you Rex

While I agree identifying triggers is key, because of the chat thing some of my triggers simply involve every day conversation. I don't even know what they are until it comes (I can't even think of one now which is a good thing!) but let's say hypothetically someone in a random conversation says "rainy night" and it reminds me of some intense chat, those memories will come flooding in. I can't really avoid conversation so all I can do is master redirecting those thoughts. So far I have been able to do that quite well, by either focusing on my goals in this whole thing, or how much better I feel now and how far I've come, or reminding myself what those fantasies actually are in REALITY which is me sitting alone in a stuffy room jerking it.

Sexual content in movies have never affected or triggered me but if they trigger you you are absolutely correct in avoiding them. Instagram is another story for me all together and is a trigger I can avoid. Looking at beautiful women is not my primary activity on instagram. I enjoy the photography and animals and cars and other hobbies, and funny things, but instagram's algorithm is so sensitive to the point where it knows not only what you hit the like button for but how long you linger on a picture. It knows exactly what type of women I am attracted to and caters that to my suggestions. It's crazy! I have no plans of deleting or deactivating it. I think instead i need to retrain the algorithm the way I am retraining my brain to focus on other things

I am not a particularly religious guy however I have no issue with anyone who is, which includes many of the people I care about the most in this world. I think it's wonderful that prayer is helpful for you, and sincerely appreciate your prayers nonetheless. It sounds like you are on a great run as well!

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NewVerse,

I know what you mean about Instagram.  That used to affect me the same way, same was true with Facebook. I would find myself wandering off and looking at the profiles of pretty women which would get me excited and would lead me to wandering off to porn sites.  I still use Facebook and I notice what you mean about algorithms. I noticed for about the first 40-50 days after going on my reboot, I would log onto Facebook and it would give me dating ads and other ads with pretty women with barely any clothes on in them (clickbait).  I just ignored them and didn't click on them, in the last 30 days I notice I don't get those ads anymore since I didn't click on them.  I now get the ads about neck massagers, snow blowers, and other things you would see on QVC.  I have found Facebook works for me I just use it as a tool to see what the friends and family are doing and check out the group updates I am a member of, I don't wander off to look at the profiles of different women. 

I never had an Instagram account, even though I looked at pretty women on Instagram for years.  Since I stopped doing that I don't see a need to have an account.  However I can see if you are a photographer like yourself or take a lot of special interest pictures of cars or the outdoors that's not a bad place to post pictures since it doesn't allow nude pictures.  Be careful on Flickr, I was logged into Flickr checking out a friend's photography page with travel photos taken of European architecture on Flickr about 30 days ago, I then did a search for something clean (can't remember what) and about 40 small tile pictures came back in the search, one of which was a nude woman.  I immediately closed the page.  Then I remembered there's no filter on content when one is logged into Flickr but if you are not logged in, there's a family filter however it only works if the person who posts the picture marks the picture as "mature photo".  Moral of the story is don't visit any websites that may have nude or porn pictures since these photos may show up in a search for clean content.