31yo reboot journal - Arahant

arahant

Active Member
Hi everyone.
I'm 31. First contact with porn for me was at age 11, more or less. Porn magazines. Then when the internet came everything got worse.
I started reboot today, because my addiction has gotten really worse in the last months, so I need to find a way out of it.
My life is suffering from this. I don't feel focused, I have troubles concentrating, I feel disconnected from myself and from real life.
I know I have to tackle the high level of stress I experience in some other ways.
I should really keep a parallel counter for meditation sessions completed, I have the feeling that that would help me a lot, if only I could manage to meditate every morning.
In the past I have stayed more than 5 years in a row away from porn, so I am confident I will be able to make it and feel a clean person again.
I really want to.
Now it's probably 6 years since I've plunged back in it and I can take no more of it. Not one single day.
I hope this forum will help me.
Thanks a lot for reading this.
Cheers.

 

NotwhoIam

New Member
Hi Arahant,

Welcome to the forum. I have also just started to reboot, story sounds similar. Fed up and can't take any more of it. I wish you the best of luck and take each day one by one.
 

arahant

Active Member
Thank you NotwhoIam :)
If you want we can be accountability partner of one another.
Cheers.
 

arahant

Active Member
Ok,
here I am, it's not even 24 hours without porn and it's already hard to resist.
I have gone on streaks of maybe one week without porn, but never intentionally: knowing that I will not look at porn makes me crave it.
Well, let's see how this goes, I hope I can make it.
 

akpal2

Well-Known Member
arahant said:
Ok,
here I am, it's not even 24 hours without porn and it's already hard to resist.
I have gone on streaks of maybe one week without porn, but never intentionally: knowing that I will not look at porn makes me crave it.
Well, let's see how this goes, I hope I can make it.

Hi Arahant,

You've come to the right place. Do you feel any PIED or is it just porn you want to quit?

Porn cravings are the strongest in the first 2 to 3 weeks. After that they go down usually. Spiking at intervals. However each person is different.

At any rate I wish you all the best for you journey.
 

arahant

Active Member
Thank you very much akpal2, I really appreciate your support.
I don't think I suffer from any PIED, but I really have no way of "checking" that at the moment as I'm not sexually active with my partner for reasons not related to porn. I'd be glad to have some kind of sexual outlet alternative to porn but I don't.
The reasons why I can't take this anymore is all the time I have lost in front of a screen (often entire nights) and the way I feel after edging for hours and hours. I feel guilty, dirty, broken inside.

Today, day 1, I have managed to meditate for 45 minutes. Meditation for me has been life-changing when I had discovered it, but it has been several years since last time I meditated... before today! So right now I'm feeling very committed to my goal and I want to make it. Of course I realize I need to change other things in my life, as I tend to show compulsive behavior towards different kinds of things, so I have to be careful not to shift my compulsion from porn to something else. But rather invest all those energies in something healthy and fulfilling.

Cheers.
 

arahant

Active Member
Day 2

Ok, beginning of second complete day without PMO or MO here.
I'm feeling very good.
Incredibly, I have meditated yesterday for the first time in some *years* and this morning I managed to meditate again. That is extremely important for me because in the last years I have never managed to restart my meditation sessions.
It seems that the commitment to reboot has helped me go back to healthy experiences, and I am very grateful for that.
I will try to keep a 45-minute meditation sessions every morning.
Also, I have started a journal, not only realted to reboot, like this one, but a real journal where I write whatever I feel to write regarding my day. I feel that helps in keeping my thoughts in order.
I have decided to not masturbate either for this goal period of 90 days. This is a secondary goal and I will see how it goes.
I am still undecided about sex with a real person. My situation is pretty complicated as I live with a partner with whom I have no intimacy at all.
I would have the availability of two other women with whom I had affairs in the past. Strangely enough, when I started to reboot I felt the need to contact one of these two women, and I fear my brain was kind of negotiating with myself: "ok, no porn, but then let's go have sex with this woman!" If I am reading the situation correctly, it would be better for me to avoid this. First of all because it would be cheating, Secondly, I suspect it would really be a substitute for porn to my brain. I was surprised that this woman called me back immediately and started to chat with me saying that her only wish is to see me, kiss me and make love to me. But I think I'll avoid that.
Apart from that, I hope that the brain fog will go away. I still don't feel very "awake", yesterday in particular I forgot to do two or three things I had to do, like showing up for a lunch outside. Those signals really make my commitment stronger, as I am sure that this brain fog is strongly related with porn as I have used it.
Another thing that I realized yesterday was that I have been using porn as a stress-reliever for almost the last 20 years and therefore I am sure it will be really hard to break some routines my brain is used to. But I will do it. I am confident I can make it.
Cheers!
 

CrazyGopher

Active Member
Hi arahant! Welcome to RN, and congrats on getting your meditation going again. :)

Really amazing that you have managed 5 years free in the past :eek: One day I hope to acheive that, too ;D
 

arahant

Active Member
Day 2 - (end of the day)

The second complete day without porn or masturbation is over.
I am happy with my progress, I haven't felt any strong urge today.
The only interesting thing I noticed was that my brain was trying to trick me into porn substitutes: for example getting me to chat erotically with a girl. In the last years, on top of porn, I have spent a lot of time on dating apps and I have quite a few contacts of girls with whom I can engage in erotic chats. I am realizing now that that is not different from porn at all, because when I was chatting with them my only target was sex, either virtual or real. But in both cases I would extensively fantasize about sex while chatting with these girls. I still remember that with one of these girls, with whom eventually I had real sex a couple of times, I used to masturbate while chatting to her, even if we weren't still talking explicitly about sex. I think one of the worst damages of porn is the objectification of women. I have always treated these girls I used to chat with like targets, almost interchangeable. Often I chatted with many at the same time. Apart from the absence of visual stimuli (even if with some I exchanged explicit photos or videos of ourselves), the process of going from one girl to another is exactly the same of porn. Think about Tinder, for instance. I believe it gives you the same kick of clicking from one porn video to another (albeit with weaker intensity).
So here I am, I am realizing that I used to apply the same "PMO thought pattern" to dating apps. And this thought was new to me.
Time to call it a day. I'll proceed, as all of you, one day at a time.
 

arahant

Active Member
Day 3
End of day 3 here.
Today I've been outside all day enjoying wonderful moments.
I'm tired now but I don't feel any need to watch P.
I have meditated after lunch today and not in the morning, because I went to bed late yesterday and I didn't wake up in time to meditate before breakfast. I was a bit sleepy while meditating, but I'm really happy that I'm keeping it up. In fact I would like to form a meditation habit while destroying the porn habit.
While outside I didn't have any fantasy, I was completely in the moment. I have some flashbacks at times, of some porn images that hit me emotionally in the past. I think they will stay forever and I would really like them to be gone forever. But I'm able to gently divert my thoughts from those images.
I feel the need for real sex, but as I maybe wrote I don't have any intimacy with my partner and I don't want to go with any girl just for sex as I feel that it would not be different from porn. Actually what I need is just cuddling and feeling connected with another person: I'm sure that would really help a lot. I use to write emais to a female friend, actually an ex-girlfriend, about spiritual issues and about my life and I feel that these emails can maybe provide me the connection I seek.
Obviously I want to build a connecion with my partner, but it's not possible at the moment, we both need to sort out many things before we can try to be really together again.
One thing I noticed: I'm much more at ease with people and I feel happy without reason. I like it, even if I'm aware that I must be aware and mindful as feelings of happiness can cause carelessness and feeling strong can lead to understimate our dangers.
This is it for today, I'm happy to be one of you: let's do it!
 

arahant

Active Member
Day 4
Tonight for the first time in my life I dreamt about porn scenes. I was watching the TV and someone I knew (but I don't remember exactly who he was) was having explicit sex with someone else. The weird thing was that I knew he was a male but had female genitals and was being penetrated by someone else. This really confused me in the dream as I couldn't figure what exactly was going on on that screen.
I really have never had any dream about porn like that in my life, and in a way I'm happy because it means I'm really doing something new here and probably my subconscious is aware of the novelty of my fight against porn.
I wasn't excited at all when dreaming or when I woke up, just confused about the weirdness of this dream.
Today has been a good day, I don't feel any urge, but I have to watch out for "weak" stimuli (for example a girl I don't know just requested to be my friend and I accepted her and messaged her to ask her whether I know her and I was almost starting to go looking at her pictures, but I stopped before even starting that. Probably it was a bad idea to even accept to be her friend.)
I work with a computer and so I am constantly online, but for the moment I am not craving anything.
I read that withdrawal symptoms come in the second week, so I'll be careful in the next days.
I'm happy to read and write on many journals here as it keeps me connected with my motivation to erase porn from my life.
I've started to read "The Porn Trap", by Wendy and Larry Maltz. It has two parts, the first one that talks about becoming aware and the second that talks about healing. I'm still reading the first one and it is helping to analyze the history of my "relationship" with porn. For example, I was struck to remember that the first contact with pornography happened when I was in elementary school, probably around age 9 or maybe younger, and I found a pornographic magazine hidden inside a tree just in front of the playground where I went to play each day. I felt really disturbed as it did not depict "normal" sex, but it featured manu men who ejaculated in a glass and made a girl drink it. It confused me as I didn't even know what sperm was and I couldn't figure out why this girl was drinking it. It disturbed me but it also fascinated me, it was like discovering a new world. And to find it hidden made me think it was some kind of buried treasure.
This book also made me think how my parents, and my mom in particular, reacted badly when they caught me with porn. She never explained me anything, she just made me feel guilty, guilty, guilty. I think that really didn't help me at all.
But whatever, here we are now and we're fighting the good fight, so let's keep showing this beast we can beat her as we're much stronger!
I send you all streams of love.
 
B

BigAl2016

Guest
Good work on reaching day 4 (of both no PMO and of daily meditation). I really believe that daily meditation can really assist the rebooting process and facilitate the healing process.

I can really identify with the objectification you wrote about on day 2. I came to see women just as sex objects - I would breathlessly observe their bodies in yoga pants in the supermarket, scanning and analysing them, undressing them with my eyes. I've also masturbated while talking to girls on the phone (about completely non-sexual matters), I've even, I'm embarrassed to say, made anonymous, silent phone calls to female friends whilst masturbating. I remember being very young (early teens, or even younger?) and sneakily kneeling down looking out of my bedroom window masturbating to girls and women in the street (even though these people where usually fully clothed and completely unsexual). I hope the rebooting process helps me to move away from this objectification - it goes against my own values and the way I would like to see and be around women.

I also identify with what you wrote in day 3 about the need for connection and non-sexual intimacy. There is currently no sex in my marriage with my wife, for various reasons, the main one being that she had a baby a few months ago (not only has she not felt ready physically or that her sex drive has returned, but also having a young baby around means we have had no real opportunity to spend intimate time together). I often crave emotional and spiritual intimacy with other people, and though my wife and I don't often relate on that level, I am able to meet this need through friendships.

I look forward to reading about your progress.
 

arahant

Active Member
Hello Alan,
thanks for your support!
I'm pretty sure that this objectification thought process will go away soon if we keep up our fight.
There is no sex with my partner for me, like it is for you, but I think it can be a good opportunity for our reboot.
How is your reboot going today?
We're in this together, let's keep supporting each other!
Cheers.
 

arahant

Active Member
Day 5
Yesterday was day 5.
I slept maybe 4 hours because I had to finish something for work and I didn't feel sleepy at all.
My daily meditation was much more difficult than usual as I was very tired and sleepy. I felt waves of anxiety coming up while meditating and I really had a hard time resisting the impulse to stop. But I made it through my session and I was very proud of that. I've become so used to just giving up to my every small desire that I really need to re-train my willpower, and meditation is a very powerful way of doing that.
I felt no urges at all to look at porn, nor to masturbate. It's being really easy for now.
We're all in this together, let's do it!
 
You're doing great Arahant. I need to get on the meditation bandwagon. Can't seem to either find the time or the menta state that is optimal. Stay strong!
 

bill8

Member
Nice work, meditation is very helpful to me.  Its important to recognize and remember the times when you feel at peace and its easy.
 

arahant

Active Member
Thank you cap.
Anyway, the type of meditation I do requires to stay in the moment and be aware of whatever is going on. It is called Vipassana meditation. It doesnt' have to do with remembering the times when I felt at peace. It has to do instead with being "awake" to yourself, whatever emotion you are feeling: recognizing it, accepting it, investigating it and not identifying with it. :)
 
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