40-Years Addicted To Video Pornography

Day 5 of quitting porn forever: March 7, 2019

I?ve always believed I am an extreme case of video porn addiction and sexual isolation. Since I have only now found this forum and the book, ?Your Brain On Porn? I don?t know anymore, if I am an extreme case, or just a lot more normal than I thought I was. I?ve tried to quit so many times I can?t count them all, everything I tried just came to hopelessness. I guess we?ll find out, because since this last week I have become totally committed to the process of banning pornography, and everything it does to me, from my life. So here we go. This is inconceivable, the very idea that I can actualyl do this, that it will work this time. Will I succeed this time? Something is very different now. I now see my brain as the problem and this is where the change is going to happen this time.

My story is a book I once would never have dared to write, purely from the shame. The shame I have carried all these many years is a weight I can?t bear anymore, so I really don?t give a damn who knows anymore if telling my story frees me from the isolation of this self-inflicted prison. I?m not going to tell people, I don?t want anyone to know, but I don?t care who knows anymore. I just want to be free of this horrible prison my brain has made for me and held me in. I always blamed myself but no more. If anything I blame human evolution for creating video porn and just being horribly susceptible to it.

My story with multi-channel video porn starts in 1979 when I was 17 years old. There was an adult bookstore with a video arcade on the seediest street in town. I remember seeing it out the car windows of my parent?s car when I was a child driving places with them. I promised myself when I was old enough, and could drive myself, I would secretly go check that place out. When I was 17, And had a car, one day it hit me like a tons of bricks, ?The video porn arcade! I can go there now!? So I went. And I have been under the control of compulsive multi-channel video porn addiction ever since.

I am now 56 and I can only think of two times I have 30 days without watching porn videos. I can only think of a handful of times I have gone longer than two weeks without compulsively and secretly driving to a video porn arcade. At times I went everday, other times a few times a week, sometimes just once a week, I never wanted to go, but I had to go. I couldn?t stop myself and I sincerely tried. For the first 20 years I felt awful about it. Eventually, I just gave up. And just secretly did what I had to do, lead a double life. A life as a video porn fueled sex addict and one as a normal person trying to have hopes and dreams of a better life, as a decent person.

If you believe tubesites are somehow new, they are merely an evolution that turned your desktop into a pornshop, a video arcade. 10-25 channel arcades have been around since the 70?s on super 8 film. Then came VHS and 50 channel arcades were common all thru the 80?s, then DVD saw the advent of 200 channel arcades during the 90?s and in late 90?s unlimited access to your computer slowly dawned. By 2006, it was all over. Any computer on earth was now an unlimited channel porn shop.  I have been involved in this evolution the whole way, seen it from the inside and participated in the evolution of how pornography is delivered and I can finally shake my head and say, ? Snap out of it, man!? 40 years... gone.

I?ve tried helplessly to quit over the years, especially early on. My guilt and shame were devastating during those years. I sought professional help, spent a fortune on the best PhD sex psychologists I could find, i ruined marriages, lost girlfriends, I went to SA meetings for while and none of it changed my behavior. 30 days max is my all-time high water mark. And that was only one time during the most extreme events of my sex life during the worst of the AIDS crisis. I scared myself shitless for 30 days when my girlfriend found my journal and dumped me. Made me move out.

Even then, 30 days was the extreme far end that could tolerate life without masturbating to video porn. At the end of those 30 days my withdrawals were like a sea of intoxicating chemistry. I had no way to understand what was happening or what expect. I went back because I was so intensely horny. I needed a way out of those feelings but couldn?t find it.

During this 40 years I have tried to quit, it seems like, at least 100 times. The number of times I told myself this is the last time, that was it, I?m done, never again... you probably can?t imagine. 40 years. But this is my story. This is the cleaned up vanilla version of my story. No need to get into the awful details. We all know how this works now.

This book, Your Brain On Porn has not only renewed my hope when I was 20 years past hopeless, the book led me here to you guys. I?m reaching out from my rock bottom of total isolation with the belief that I can still change this now. This is new technology for me. I don?t think my case has been solvable, I believed I was hardwired by the hand of fate to be a masturtbating porn pervert, a sexual misfit. People have said, you can?t change people like that, they are incurable.

I?ve never committed sex crimes, ever. I know where the line between legal and illegal activity lis drawn and I would never hurt anyone... but my isolation has hurt people I love just by it?s very nature. Being incapable of intimacy hurts the people who love you in awful and sometimes torturous ways. In oregon, where I live, the laws here on vidro arcades and what you can do in them is a free for all. loosest sex laws in the country for strip clubs and all sex business. it?s the worst state I could possibly live in for my addiction.

But for the first time in my life, I see this ray of hope for me and I?m reaching out of my dark hole. Is there anyone out there? Can I finally be free of this?

 

BigMog

Active Member
Hi 40 Years,
Yes there?s plenty of us here; you are definitely not alone. I?m sure others will respond soon as well.
There?s lots of good information and tips on the forum. Looks like you?ve made a good start with 5 days and finding YBOP and this forum.
Your story is not unlike mine, but I think I?ve been lucky and not suffered to quite the same intensity as you have. There is a vast array of different stories told here but all with the same themes of porn getting people hooked and damaging their lives. And, yes, judging by the stories in this section and others you can get free of this.
I?m still working on my problem but I think I?m heading in the right direction.
My only advice is to keep reading from all useful sources (especially YBOP) and see what short and long term tips/tricks work for you.

I?m sure others will chime in with tips and encouragement!



 

workinprogressUK

Well-Known Member
Hi 40-years.
Thanks for the introduction. Yours is a story not unlike many of the others here. Most of us have tried and failed to snap out of our P and S addictions for many years, with varying degrees of success. What gives me hope that I can change for good, and that you can too, is the amount of scientific information and data available to help with an informed and rational recovery. It looks like you're going to have a tough time breaking your personal cycle of behaviour, but I wish you every success.
 
Day 6:
A Conversation With My Brain


This is the part of my cycle where I start to really feel it. This is when the green lights come on and I prepare my body and mind to bath in the sexual chemistry of arousal. At age 56, and at my extreme length of porn addiction, I am nearly entirely incapable of errection snymore. Without a number of factors working together I can?t get hard. Porn induced ED started over 10-12 years ago. But my brain is so intent on PMO that it has a way to hotwire the proccess.

I am so far down the line with porn addiction I have flatlined from extreme overuse and over stimulation. After about a week the chemistry starts to hit my brain and I know that I can orgasm if I put all the factors together... but last week not even that worked.

I?ve reached the far end of the train ride where my sex function is completely burnt out, but the desire to fap returns without fail, it took hours of hard stimulation but I finally got off even though I never got hard. This is where you all are heading if you keep going. Limp Dick City, needing things like a combination if poppers, porn and other extremes to ejaculate from a limp dick. I?m pretty sure I?m edging toward a stroke or an aneurysm as I sometimes get orgasm migraine, intense pain in the skull/base of brain, occipital region, from forcing arousal and orgasm when the body isn?t ready, when it hasn?t had enough time to built up enough steam yet. I have learned how to massage the system past that and orgasm anyway. This strikes me as being very dangerous, my dad had a massive stroke at 53. Still couldn?t stop myself.

So I realized I?d reached rock bottom, my rock bottom. I honestly didn?t think I had a rock bottom. I quit my job a year ago to ?find something better suited to a man my age.? But I?ve kept making excuses to not go back to work. I have slowly watched myself completely isolate and sit alone with my addiction. I could spend a whole day surfing tubesites for more and more extreme videos.

I have noticed my brain become incapable of social interaction. I can actually feel the areas of my brain light up and go dormant in the midst of my process and after, how vital areas if my brain, the parts i need to deal with life, are shutting down.

My brain is crippled right now. I feel the dead zones in the prefrontal cortext that barely function at all at the moment. I feel the pleasure centers getting ready for the next cycle as the dead zones grow deader.

Waking up this morning, while lying in twilight sleep, i could feel the pleasure centers at the base of my lower brain preparing to go do it again, the area behind my eyes, pituitary and accumbens. I decided to have a conversation with my brain. It went like this.

?Okay, Brain... You?ve had your turn.? I told it, addressing the softly glowing pleasure centers. ?I gave you free reign all this time and you?ve brought me here. This is Rock Bottom. Now it?s my turn. I?ve got to pull us up out of here and I want you to be civil about this, none of this childish backlash like before. This time, I am onto your game and we?re not doing the porn thing anymore. We?re going to recondition the brain completely and we?re going to enjoy life again in a whole new way. So no more porn. I am taking control now and you are going to obey. Just play nice please because I gave you your turn, now it?s my turn to have a life.?

So I fell back to sleep. I dreamed I was in San Francisco on business. Suddenly, I realized I was riding skateboards down a hill and the guy I was with was hitting on me, implying we should ?go somewhere.?

We skated right into a video arcade and there I was surrounded by porn booths, gay men and swimming in sexual chemistry. Not just ordinary chemistry but this was an exceptionally powerful intensity I don?t normally feel. It was like the beast had awakened and all I had to do was surrender to it. I felt like I was being put on notice by a fire breathing dragon.

Fortunately for me, I asked myself to resist and leave there immefiately. As I headed for the door I was blocked by two huge, bald, hairy chested gay bears coming in, both wearing little bo peep outfits. I wasn?t attracted to the men but I was on fire with arousal chemistry to the brain.

Then I woke up bathed in the chemistry of arousal but it subsided as soon as I became conscious and shut it off.

My brain gave me it?s answer. It said I have been put on notice.

I guess I should expect some resistance at this point.

Day 6, here we go!
 
40-yearsOnVideoPorn said:
?Okay, Brain... You?ve had your turn.? I told it, addressing the softly glowing pleasure centers. ?I gave you free reign all this time and you?ve brought me here. This is Rock Bottom. Now it?s my turn. I?ve got to pull us up out of here and I want you to be civil about this, none of this childish backlash like before. This time, I am onto your game and we?re not doing the porn thing anymore. We?re going to recondition the brain completely and we?re going to enjoy life again in a whole new way. So no more porn. I am taking control now and you are going to obey. Just play nice please because I gave you your turn, now it?s my turn to have a life.?

I Love this!!!  I think I will have a similar one sided conversation with my own brain!  I am also adding in some positive self talk.  I recommend the book "What To Say When You Talk To Yourself" by Shad Helmstetter.  It contains a number of good self talk scripts for quitting bad habits, increasing self esteem, increasing personal motivation and more. 

You are on the right track! Never give up! :)
 
DAY 7
Saturday: My Trigger Day


Normally Saturday is the day I run all my errands by myself and if I haven?t PMO?d to video porn I will drop in to the local video arcade and run my routine. 20 years I?ve been going to that same arcade 2-3 times per week. My car could drive itself there.

Today, I took my dog, a golden retreiver and we drove up to the snow at the top of the hills, the opposite direction of the porn shop. I let the dog run around in the snow and chilled out.

When we came down the hill, I drove to the grocery store and got stuff to make a nice dinner. Extremely boring but that is how it?s supposed to be. Life without artificial hyper-stimulation of the reproductive functions.

Just slowly going through the reboot process and considering the way the brain will eventually rewire to the new living conditions.

Condition 1: Life After Porn

Just waiting for my brain to heal after a 40-year head trauma.

My lifelong friend is in ICU in a coma after an aneurysm. I feel like we are both on the long road to recovering from brain injuries.i
 
Day 8
The Master Habit


Yesterday, I discovered Mark Queppet?s Universal Man site and downloaded his Reboot Regimen pdf. He discusses the Hardmode Reboot and porn as escapism. On youtube, I heard him give a talk about ?The Master Habit? and that really made a lot of sense to me. It had to do with the things we use as ?escape behaviors? and our reluctance to sit down and face the set of feelings we experience that drive us to employ our escape behaviors.

Evidently, when a set of uncomfortable feelings begins to happen within ourselves, we run to our escape behaviors because those are the actions that we have learned will always instantly bring us back into our comfort zone and give us relief from our uncomfortable and painful feelings.

So, it seems pretty straightforward when you put it like that. The Master Habit is the one that turns us away from our escape behaviors and makes us step outside our comfort zone to essentially greet these feelings of pain and discomfort directly. We make the decision that it is time to address these powerful feelings by allowing their presence, letting ourselves have the time to work through what is behind them by disallowing escapism behaviors. Eventually, things get better and we can resolve what is causing those harsh feelings of pain and discomfort. By stepping outside our comfort zone and employing The Master Habit, we build a gradual tolerance to having feelings of pain and discomfort in our lives without feeling we need to keep turning to our escape behaviors.

I feel strongly that this has been my core issue in life, the source of my dissatisfaction in living, my unwillingness to face my strong and powerful feelings of pain and discomfort. I feel like, at age 56, I am finally armed with the right knowledge that will allow me to address these core reasons for my porn use and food addictions and escape behaviors.

Today is day Day 8: No PMO / Day 738: No Alcohol / Day 1: No Sugar

Time to face the inconvenient truth and open myself up to all that I was unwilling to feel before. I believe reboot, rewire and recovery is a journey of learning how to feel again. For me, this is a journey toward a place where opening the heart to the acceptance of everything I am feeling is possible.
 

workinprogressUK

Well-Known Member
Great post. Your commitment + understanding + action shine through, which will hopefully = success. Reading your post has given me a buzz of positive energy... much needed on a Monday morning!

I've not read "The Master Habit" but the thesis fits with a lot of the stuff that I've read or been taught, and i buy-in to it. I'll go take a look. I remember a therapist at the end of a week-long residential saying something that stopped me in my tracks.... "well life isn't always nice. There are shitty bits, and maybe you just need to  learn how to deal better with the shitty bits". My P addiction was one of the self-soothing, safe places to go hide when i wasn't coping with other underlying factors. All good so far  :). For me, the "elephant in the corner" has always been that it's one thing knowing that I have issues that I struggle to cope with and face-up to. It's another thing dealing with them head-on, when the cold reality hits. That's the bit I'm still struggling with, you know? But you have over 2 years sobriety from alcohol, which shows a lot of fortitude and courage. I really admire the approach you're taking here and I wish you every success.
 
Thanks for the comments. It?s nice to know there are others out there being supportive and encouraging. I appreciate it.


Day 9
Facing My Demons


I had to get my taxes done today, which took me out of my normal everyday part of town to a place about 40 minutes from here. I had to travel through Portland, Oregon and pass all my usual places of habit. Half a dozen video porn arcades and about 50 strip clubs. Several of these places I have a rich history with and twenty-plus years of frequenting at-will. Pornographic memories the likes of which you can?t imagine.

Day 9 is a perfect day for me to go to a porn shop. It?s right in the green light timing of my 40-year habit. Just drop in for a quick PMO after an appointment and continue on my way home. Perfect weather here today. Sunny and warm, bright and refreshing.

I knew I would be challenged today, driving alone through Portland. Nobody to stop me from a quick in&out PMO session. We have places, they are like bars here. You can drop in and see live nude girls dancing, on nearly every corner, like starbucks.

You can go to one of several dozen porn shop/video arcades here in town and do whatever you want in there. They are not monitored for behavior, PMO alone or with a friend is encouraged here. The booths are all made for multiple people to fit in, with padded seating like a restaurant booth, rolls of paper towels. Some have couches or desks. The glory holes are on both sides of the booth with a porn monitor over the hole so you can watch porn while some anonymous entity from next door enjoys your penis for you.

Hey, it?s not gay if you can?t see who?s sucking your dick... It could be Kylie Jenner over there... but more like probably Caitlin, (or no one if you prefer. It?s all whatever you want it to be. And that the essence of the problem... but also the key to your own freedom. You?re free to leave at any moment you choose. No one is forcing you to do anything you don?t want to do. Everything you do there is a choice you alone are making, even when your inhibitions are down around your ankles, nobody is making you do anything you don?t want to do.)

However, by the same token, no one is going to tell you no, you can?t do that here. This is where you go to do whatever you want. Every so often females will wander in and offer their services for a fee. Sometimes guys bring them in, sometime on dog leashes or on a chain, and invite other guys to enjoy their girl. She is there out of a fetish to prove she loves him and will do anything for him. Couples have some pretty twisted ways of professing love to each other. I?ve seen it get pretty crazy in there after the bars close. It?s a damn free-for-all.

This is what I have to face. This is what I faced today, my body?s habitual compulsion to go there and do whatever I feel like doing, always involving PMO, if we?re being honest. It?s a porn-based masturbatory universe with nothing stopping you and nothing but enthusiastic encouragement and sexual opportunities. Throw out a bottle of poppers, a pile of condoms and it?s game-on. PMO is now in session. By yourself, or with a friend. If you close the door and lock it, no one will bother you.

So I was in the neighborhood and I noticed how it felt, how that part of me felt to want that, to be tricked into thinking I need that. I used to think I would go crazy without it, i had to have it, but today, I just wanted to feel what it felt like to not be in flatline mode. I wanted to feel what it was going to be like when I would face real challenge.

So, I needed gas and wanted coffee. So, I got off the freeway at the same exit I always get off at to use the porn shop. And I gassed up the car, went to star bucks and drove the opposite way, away from the place I would always go. The place I went 9 days ago and had the most powerful orgasm of my life, the one that blew my brains out of my skull. The one that I would like to be my last for a long while.

I wanted to face the Demons, feel their magnetic draw on my chemistry... and I was not disappointed. It would be the easiest thing in the world to give in. I could feel my flatlined, dormant brain lighting up and the warm heroin of sexual chemistry fill my spine with tingling euphoria of exotic intoxication. I knew my brain was trying to run it?s routine, cycle through the pleasure program, but not today.

Part if me could not conceive of how I could not run that routine, in disbelief that this was even possible, even sane or rational. Anther part of me stood by observing and learning from this experience.

Today is Day 9, normally a day of PMO, but not this time. I am doing something I have never done before, entering a new domain, somewhere I have no experience being, living in the world without porn, masturbation and orgasm. Walking around with no leash, nothing stopping me, no time constraints and all the opportunity in the world.

My feelings were powerful and these are the real demons that I face. I did not run from my demons today. I did not try to escape them. I pulled off the freeway where they like to congregate and I beckoned them to approach me. I did not beg for mercy nor did I entertain my demons, the feelings of desire I experienced. I wanted to see their faces and look them in the eye.

I simply observed them out of pure curiosity from a different perspective than I ever have before. I felt the intoxicating surges of wanting to go and do it one more time. So easy, just go down that road and pull in the parking lot. But now I know it?s Day 9 and I want to experience Day 10 more than I care to have another mind-numbing orgasm. More than I want to mal-condition my brain one more time.

I drove home, carefully rebalancing my brain chemistry and trying to understand, drinking my black coffee and just focused on making it through the rest of the day without eating sugar.


Day 9 No PMO / Day 739 No Alcohol / Day 2 No Sugar
 
Day 10:
Accepting The Feelings; Recovering The Whole Self


Today is a quiet day for me. It?s a day of being present in the moment without a lot of extra stimulation. Journaling, paying the bills online, going to the grocery store and getting in touch with how I feel.

I can journal on my iPhone, as I am doing now. Typing with one index finger. To pay the bills, I have to go to my docked laptop, which is on a desk connected to a keyboard and large Apple Cinema Display, the kind that are perfect for watching multiple streams of video porn in full HD.

I knew I had some unfinished business on my computer so I took care of all of it. First, I located a tax form I forgot yesterday and sent that off, then I paid the monthly bills and then, I paused... I had avoided even turning in this computer for the past 10 days because... it?s the one with the potential to cause a problem.

Was I ready to locate the remaining several dozen porn videos on my computer? Could I locate them and delete them without watching any of them?

Just the thought made my entire body bristle with sexual chemistry. From a flatline state to an intravenous shot of heroin is how it felt for me. But I get it... that?s what porn is. I?m learning here, things which I did not know before. This is not like anything else. Pornography is instantly intoxicating, from your own insides... out. It?s my ever-present addiction.

I typed in the word lesbian. Just the sight of the filenames appearing on my screen made me swoon with sexual chemistry through my veins. I wondered if I was committed enough to accomplish the task. I understand that I am becoming aroused by the mere thought of the presence of pornography. Porn at my fingertips. Here it is. An infinite supply. Just click on it and feel the drug overwhelm and flood your entire body, mind and spirit.

I looked the filenames and recalled so many lost days and nights of unproductive neurochemical rewards, wasted hours of masturbation to what those files contained.

I said good bye to all those beautiful girls in my mind, highlighted the files and deleted them without looking at their contents. I knew I had to let it all go. The time has come in my life to move on.

I have another drive, my torrenting drive that was going to be more difficult to sift through. I typed in the word Lesbian and weeded out several dozen folders, deleting them as I went. Each filename lighting up my brain with memories and sexual chemistry and fragments of scenes of girls making love to each other. Always my greatest weakness since the first time I saw girl-girl porn at age 12. So intoxicating... delete.

Then I typed in XXX which all porn torrent titles contain and the rest of the residue of my former life floated to the top. A few thumbnails came up, the shape of a woman appeared on the sidebar of the finder screen and I highlighted the files and deleted them. My blood was racing now.

I sat for a minute to face these powerful feelings, to breath them in and notice how I was feeling. I marveled at how powerful pornography is and how easy it would be to press the play button. How intoxicating and all-powerful that play button has become for me.

The Play Button... it?s right there. Look at all the porn files that are still there! Intermixed with other files I need to keep. Weed them out and delete them. Each one full of memories, intoxicating, powerful sexual imagery-laden memories each one sending pangs of powerful cravings through my lungs to stoke the engines of sexual passion.

Carefully, locate each porn file and delete it. Such an awful thing to have to do. Every cell in my body screaming, ?NOOOO!!!! Nooooo! Don?t do that, Press play!!! Press play!!!?

Delete... delete... delete. Empty Trash.

Finally, after a few more searches, I could find not one single porn file hiding on my computer hard drives.

[I have done this same act dozens of times over the course of my life. This is by no means the first time I have ever deleted all my porn files and said, ?No more!? Why is this time any different?]

But once again, They are all gone. And I am sitting here experiencing the way my body feels right now from committing that neurochemical crime against nature, the biological crime of coming into contact with unlimited streams of video pornography.

The battle is won and lost in our feelings, through understanding them, or not, so this is where we need to focus our attention. How will we handle our sexual feelings when they become overwhelming for us? The tipping point, for me, lies in my decision to either entertain my own sexual feelings, or not. Let?s examine this tipping point, this decision making process between entertaining our intoxication or choosing not to.

I hear a lot of guys talking about getting triggered by the things that really send them reeling. I can relate. I have all the same mechanisms in my addictive feelings.

The reason I have always felt hopelessly incurable is because just seeing a girl with a nice ass in skin tight pants has been enough to ruin me for the day, but it doesn?t have to be like that. However, I could not stop my own mind from the indulging in the perversion of undressing her and bathing in my own sexual feelings of arousal as I did. It only took an instant and I allowed it to happen, I chose to do this of my own free will. (with some help from my primal nature.)

I did not yet understand I could have learned how to appreciate her without over-sexualizing the sight of her shape... I had a choice to be more mature in my perspective relevant to noticing her presence on the street. Yes, I would like to have a relationship with a girl who looked lije that and enjoy all the benefits. Too bad that kind of thing is only for men who are sexually healthy. Maybe I should consider everything that is involved in being sexually healthy and try to understand what are the rewards sexually healthy people enjoy.

At my worst, my entire body would be overwhelmed by the sight of her jogging body. It gives me empathy for why muslim societies make women, or why the women might choose to, wear burkas. I?m sure it helps the men stay sane. Guys get triggered at the sight of the human form all dolled up specifically to be sexually attractive. Western Society is laced with sexual imagery. It?s about Capitalism, it?s about wealth, it?s about what sells, how to make it sell... sex sells. If advertisers could legally use porn to sell their advertising products they would bury society in it. and we are very nearly there in America today.

Sugar, sex and cash... Money, food and sex. How do these items make me feel? I am in a process of investigation, study and deep catharsis about how these affect the way I feel.

For now, I am reaching out and opening myself up to my uncomfortable and painful feelings. I have cleared a quiet space in my heart and in my mind for studying the sensations of my being. I have made time to open my heart snd mind up into an unconditional acceptance of the way I presently am.

I am no longer running away. I am no longer seeking escape in my vices. I am remaining present in the moment to accept my visitors, my feelings of every kind and make. The good feelings, the uncomfortable and painful, the joys and sadness of my present situation.

I?m allowing myself to experience my own feelings now without running away, without trying to escape them by reaching for the vice. This is going to require many days and many nights of waiting for my visitors and welcoming them, letting them stay without over-indulging them, and learning to enjoy, or at least endure their company.


LOVE IS THE VISITOR
[An original poem from October 1984]
 
Love is the visitor
I run to embrace
The kind peaceful sweetheart
Of soft-featured face.

Love is the visitor
I wait by my door
Until I feel love,
Until I feel love
Once more.

Love is the stranger
Only seldom my heart
Does see such a light
Passing by in the dark.

Love is the visitor
A soft-spoken truth
A sweet simple melody
To which I danced in my youth.

Love is the kindness
The warmth of a soul
Passed to another
With a heart that is whole.

Love is the visitor
I embrace now and then
In the flight of my spirit
In the eyes of a friend.

And if by some chance
Someday it would come
That the whole world together
Could suddenly be one.
Love would be that
Through which we would see
This is the way
It was always meant to be...
Love is always meant to be.

Love is a feeling
A presence so clear
Love is the visitor
That I wish were here.






Today is:
Day 10 No PMO / Day 740 No Alcohol / Day 3 No Sugar
 
Day 11
Revelations In Personal Responsibility


Tough day. Had to go out and run some errands and I have to admit... It?s very difficult not to picture women naked and want to imagine doing reproductive acts with them in the store. Seeing a woman?s ass in leggings is such a trigger for me. And they KNOW they are doing it, too! They have to know they are dressed to trigger.

But going off the rails or having anything realistically sexual happen... outside of an Oregon Porn Shop or strip club? It?s a matter of sexual opportunity and when one presents itself, I have rarely had the will to pass on a situation. So in a pickup spot, there is no porn present. Is that a green light? For me, I say no. Prostitutes offering their services? Still no, in my opinion. Meeting a woman at a bar and taking her home? I?d probably give that a green light since, one, I don?t drink and two, no woman (worth fucking) at a bar has ever invited me to take her home and fuck her.

It never happens to me. That?s why I opened myself up to other, emotionally safer, actually stupider and far more disgusting outlets. While I?ve done a lot of stupid acts for an orgasm, I?m starting to take a lot more pity on myself and look back in forgiveness for all my unforgivable sins involving my sperm. I was on my own to try to figure my own sexual feelings out and here is where that got me.

On the eve of my thousandth time of promising myself I was going to quit, I decided to do a net search for porn addiction stopping... or whatever, and I came across Gary Wilson?s Your Brain On Porn. I downloaded, read it within a few days after and it completely changed my life. For me, it was exactly what I needed, everything I had been missing before. It gave me everything I needed to know in order to successfully break my cycle of porn addiction, where nothing else ever even came close. Yes, it?s only Day 11 but this is completely new. I understand my cravings now.

I finally have an understanding of what is causing the cravings so I can be mindful of this set of feelings that occurs, what?s behind those feelings when they occur, so I can step out of each craving to let it pass.

Oddly enough, the same Master Habit of stepping out of the comfort zone and into the space of critical self examination, works across every area of our lives. It?s an act of taking personal responsibility for our actions, thoughts and intentions. Making a choice to commit to The Master Habit is not just an act of compassion for oneself, it?s a revelation of personal responsibilty. It?s the difference between being in control of oneself or act?n a fool.

The rest is just a matter of ?you gotta ride this one out.? I may have tried to quit a thousand times before, but now I am convinced I am just riding this one out for the last time. I have more respect for myself than that now. I won?t disappoint you, the person reading this, because I want to be your example of a successful recovery, someone you can look to and see your way out.. I have no desire to let my sexual chemistry overwhelm me. I have a solid conviction that, before 11-days ago, I did not understand what I now know.

Armed with this knowledge, I want to believe there is not one chance in hell I will ever go back to my habitual escape into Artificial Hyperstimulation. 

Yes, I am horny as a bitch in heat and I want to fuck everything shwishing in a skirt but I have to be honest... I?m 56 years old and those days are behind me. It?s time to focus on becoming sexually healthy and building a better life.

My old ways are the definition of foolishness. I just have to shake my head and ask myself What The Fuck Was I Thinking? Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results: the definition of insane!

I have entered a healing time. The reboot phase. No longer aggravating an enflamed wound and letting it heal over. All I can do now is ride it out. Just riiiiiiide that one out.

Day 11 No PMO / Day 741 No Alcohol / Day 4 No Sugar

(Sugar is by far the hardest one to quit)
 

MosesY

Active Member
40-yearsOnVideoPorn said:
That was then and this is now.
We all dig up any reason we can find to fail so we can keep enjoying the intoxication of being addicted to our precious high. It sounds like you prefer being intoxicated, wallowing in self-pity, living in the past and failing, so I don?t want to waste anymore time on this conversation. It?s pointless.

You posted this on my journal and I just read your journal. I have a better idea of where you are coming from now. I don't think you are a mean person by nature, you are just frustrated with your own inability to beat the habit. If you read the rules, it states that we are to support and encourage one another. I note that both your intellect and the length of your posts are far superior to mine. Congratulations on day 11.
 
Day 13

Woke up into the SuperFog of brain states. Taking me an hour just to open my eyes and get going. Drinking espresso right now. Barely helps. Feel like I?ve been hit by a truck.

Part of the brain fog this time is my sugar detox. I think I am on Day 6 of No Sugar. I am also working on the Plant Paradox diet right now to get through the sugar cravings. As part of this whole package I am doing something called Intermittent Fasting. This is where I take in all of my calories between the hours of noon and 6 pm. This gives my body a solid 18 hours each day to clear the slate and to spend a solid block of time in a fat burning mode.

Stopping sugar, getting on a healthy diet, is part of my support plan to alleviate imbalances all-around. The cravings for sex are limited in this extended flatline state I?m in, so I don?t expect to face the brunt of the sexual challenge for a while, beyond the behavior habit of breaking my routine PMO. I am pretty sure I will hit the Wall later... after Day 90, or so.

In the meantime while I prepare for the return of intense sexual cravings, I am getting in touch with how to handle super-cravings by dealing with these secondary contributors first. Giving up sugar and giving up food that causes inflamation will only help my health and that, in turn, will only contribute to my sexual health recovery.

My guts are all fucked up from a lifetime of drinking, smoking weed and eating a bad diet. The doctor told me I had GERD and over the years it started to progress just as described. Bad acid, food getting stuck half way down the esophagus every day, it?s the most awful way to die. I?m facing possible stomach or esophagus cancer if I continue eating a bad diet. My career as a commercial color printing pressman caused horrible constant deadline stress and fast food gut rot. And alcoholism. I?m totally fried.

Coffee in the morning and alcohol all night was how I lived for decades. Throw in a fast food diet, constant masturbation to porn and anonymous sex to relieve the stress and you can get a pretty good picture of the direction where my body is heading. I am a total loser. I really need to get my shit together.

The diet is giving me a chance to lay a foundation and better my odds for a full recovery. At age 56, while all my friends and family are having strokes, heart attacks, diabetes and gout... this seems like a good enough indicator that it?s time to take this very, very seriously.

The Plant Paradox diet has been a miracle for healing my gut. I was on it from last May until Thanksgiving, (when I relapsed off the diet) and it completely healed my gut problems. It took months but by Thanksgiving I was out of the woods. Now, I am quite a ways back in the woods again. I have to start taking the remaining years of my life with deadly seriousness now or I simply won?t have them.

>>>>>

Got stuck in traffic in Portland this afternoon. This set me straight into the teeth of my addiction behavior when I was forced to take surface streets due to roadwork and road closures. I had to drive right past several strip clubs and three, count them, three porn shops which I have frequented in the past.

I felt the central pleasure center area of my brain trying to hijack the prefrontal cortex. I really just observed the way the addictive process works as my triggers became evident. I kept tapping myself on the forehead and telling the prefrontal cortext of MY OWN BRAIN to, ?Fight for it! If you want a better life you are going to have to fight the other parts of the brain for control!? tap, tap, tap on the forehead as the off ramps approached.

?PREFONTAL CORTEX!!! FRONT AND CENTER!!! WHO?S IN CONTROL HERE?? WHICH PART OF THE BRAIN IS MAKING THE DECISIONS!!!????

And for one of the first times in my life, the steering wheel turned toward home and not toward the porn shop. I made it home without compulsively stopping off for porn. A battle I have stuggled with for decades. I nearly wept... It?s all about which part of the brain has control of our actions.

Today is:
Day 13 No PMO / Day 743 No Alcohol / Day 6 No Sugar

???????-


Day 12
Difficult day in terms of cravings. Really spending too much time entertaining bad thoughts. I need to be in the same space with my feelings and work through them without self-indulging or getting caught up in them.

Everything is intensfying regarding my sex-charged feelings as each day passes with no PMO, even though I still feel completely flatlined. I notice the feelings of arousal are in my lungs... i.e. breathing changing to sexual breath.

working on understanding my body?s triggers and the crossover from normal breathing to sexual breathing. The breathing is the result of leaking sexual chemistry hitting the blood, bringing on arousal, noticed first by the sensations in the breath, sexual tension in the chest area. So, I am dealing with physically wanting to (central pleasure center) and mentally knowing I don?t want to (prefrontal cortext) at the same time and understanding, by living inside of, this duality. It?s a painful space to be in. I see why I would always reach for the relief behaviors and seek to escape the painful space. Understanding the brain science helps alleviate, or only manage, the pain.

At the same time, I can clearly feel the two choices regarding brain conditioning: wiring my whole self for one, or the other mode of thinking (pleasure or deliberate action.) I?ll either deal with the feelings and reboot/rewire the house for 220v, or go back to masturbating and live life as a 12v battery, flatlining for life.

And forget 110v...

I don?t think I?ve been capable of regular sex for a long time now. (20 years) It feels like all or nothing now. I?m either going to reach a new level beyond anywhere I?ve ever been before or I?ll fail and stay at this awful low-voltage state the rest of my life. Writing this helps me understand what I have to do. I need to become the kind if man I have always wished I could have been. A kind of man I would admire. The kind of man without any skeletons in his closet.


For someone like me, who is so far gone, so many years of encrusted habituation, just thinking of porn causes a physiological response similar to actually using it. The brain delivers enough chemistry in the form of an ultra-strong craving which changes my state, alters my breath, and puts me in an actual blood chemistry euphoria. It?s a cycle initializing dose of sex hormone, a hit, a physical flashback to the high of PMO itself and the body recalls the actual feelings of intoxication. The pull to PMO from this point is nearly uncontrollable, hence the term, addiction and dependency. The brain produces the initilizing hit in the form of powerful reminders, to hijack the system, deliver intense cravings to make you act-out the full-blown cycle of using the addictive substance.

I believe PMO is a corruption of one of the core human survival instincts of reproduction. It?s like what eating McDonald?s is to actual nutrition, or what money is to how the earth actually provides resources. Mankind has completely lost touch with what is natural and necessary for a quality life. The ability to control and sell the earth?s resources has corrupted us to the point where we sell each other poisons now to survive. We can?t even distinguish poison from naturally healthy needs anymore.

I?m convinced the human species is corrupt and running off the rails commiting countless crimes against logic, reason and especially nature.

Note to self: develop project
NEW LIFE RESCUE AND RECOVERY
 
C

cranm329

Guest
I have GERD too. May be worth (another?) endoscopy.
Barrett's oesophagus is best picked up early and if treated with PPI long term can reduce risk of cancer.
We'll done with the diet and lifestyle changes.
 
Day 14
Thinking With The Pleasure Centers v.s. The Prefontal Cortex

So, I have made it to two weeks. Half of my all-time record without PMO. My sugar and food cravings are calming down quite a bit, now that I have been on my diet for a full week. Rather than allow myself ?a cheat day? every week or two, I have decided this is out of the question right now, because of how eating even a little bit of sugary food or bad carbs only increases the cravings later. It makes no sense to just step backwards when the cravings are so dufficult to endure.

I am treating food, sugar and PMO as all a part of the same problem for me. My whole self has to be put in check if I am going to make a successful recovery. I will not half-assed this opportunity to recover this time. I?m going to force myself to succeed. Force myself to surrender, if that makes any sense.

What is pushing what? I am convinced this is a battle between the Pleasure Centers in the core area of the brain and our Prefrontal Cortex. It is a battle between which will control our lives and make the decisions regarding our actions. I can feel a very mild pressure in either area depending on which has the most energy lighting it up. I?m sure this could be seen in brain scans.

I?m just going to have to be very strict with myself for a while. I need to sort out when I am in control of the cravings and when I am at risk of losing control of my behavior. For now, it seems like all my cravings are calming down and I might stand a chance of feeling more comfortable and relaxed day-to-day. I believe, if I focus on not allowing myself to make decisions based in the sensations from my pleasure-driven core of my brain and instead fixate on using the prefrontal cortext to plan and schedule my actions, I can get through this.

Women have always tried to belittle men by telling us we are thinking with our little head instead of our big one. I am now starting to see how we think with one brain but from our pleasure centers or from ?front and center? in the PFC.

In firearms training, my instructors always taught me to ?get your brain cells front and center? any and every time you unholster a weapon. I think the same needs to be true for the weapon in my pants. The implications of a ?accidental discharge? are life-changing events, when you really think about it. Sex changes peopke?s lives for better or worse. It?s either bonds us, or it breaks us apart.

In my case, the misuse of the weapon in my pants has only brought me to isolation and the brink of suicide. I am convinced I still have a chance to reverse this situation, and build a better, more rewarding life for myself in the everyday world. I?ll always regret the 40 years of lost opportunities i never saw because I was fixated on the world of porn and jerking myself off.

Today is:
Day 14 No PMO / Day 744 No Alcohol / Day 7 No Sugar
 
Day 16:
Cravings Slowly Easing


Today is a quiet day for me. It is very windy and the internet is knocked offline so I am just sitting quietly typing this into Notes on my iPhone. Since I have stuck to my guns on No Sugar/No PMO and the new strict diet, (Dr. Gundry?s Plant Paradox) the three together have had enough time now to where they are all starting to work and I am noticing my body SLOWLY beginning to make a very gradual adjustment to the New Life.

I can see now that everything I was doing was a way of artificially hyper stimulating my body. The sugar and candy and sweet treats were causing spikes and lows that lead to more strong cravings. Internet porn just opened the sexual wound and made it itch and require constant scratching and maintenance. Video games, YouTube videos, too much screen time and TV it?s all the same hyperstimuli to the brain. It?s all fake. It?s not real-life. By leaving it all alone my body is slowly healing and adjusting to life without it.

All that fake food/bad nutrition, fake sex/masturbation, fake accomplishment/ computer gaming and fake thinking is just poison. The only thing that is real and healthy and sows seeds that actually produce anything worthwhile is action. As you sew, so shall you reap.

This first couple of weeks was just miserable in terms of cravings and instability of purpose. I really felt all over the map, just sloshing around in the high seas of my own neurochemistry. But now, the storm is settling down and I feel like I am in a better place to take on the Full Moon Challenge.

Getting control of my carb intake is the most huge thing in the world for me. Sugar cravings are more powerful than the sex cravings by far, right now, and by taking out the bad carbs my whole self has settled down a lot. The real success came once I had eliminated the carbs that breakdown into sugar inside the body. Once I was rid of all of it, my physical body cravings are beginning to ease off slowly. I?m starting to feel better.

I still feel totally flat lined so I am not worried about full moon so much this month. I think in future months, if I can stay true to my choice to be free of PMO, I?ll be more greatly challenged by sexual urges. I feel pretty good right now. Relieved. Like when you turn the corner after a bad flu or cold and have those huge chest-filling sighs of relief and start feeling better. I am just relieved to be making progress on my road to quitting porn and all the awful things that went with it. I have never been more ready to put it all behind me.

Today is:
Day 16 No PMO / Day 746 No Alcohol / Day 8 No Sugar



Day 15:
Severe Headache at base of skull


I don?t have much to report today. In the late afternoon I had a terrible headache at the base of my skull surrounding where the spine meets the brain. This is the same area where I feel orgasms the strongest. Same area I experience thecsearing orgasm headaches. This ache was in the center of the brain, in the core area. The way it felt was indescribable so I won?t bother going into more detail.

Two tylenol knocked right out. I waited until almost 10pm hoping water and rest would make it go away but no avail. So I hit it back finally.

I am slowly turning my life away from Artificial Hyperstimulation in every area I can think where it affects me most. In food and in sex were the first changes I made and I am very slowly, just now, starting to feel the cravings easing and I am starting to feel the possibility of being more comfortable and balanced in the future. There are still difficult times throughout the day where I start feeling very needy but I am dealing with it by applying the rules: only certain foods at certain times and sorry guy, no sex... at all. deal with it.

I haven?t had even a hint of an erection since Day 0. Nothing. All my agony is in the addictive brain and with the force it exerts on my emotions and hormones. Slowly this is starting to balance more... so gradual I almost can?t tell. As long as I avoid hyperstimulation, I seem to be ok. I avoid getting triggered as much.

Time is the great healer and I am looking forward to each new day now because it?s the next day, where I feel a little bit better in my recovery and I am that much further slong, closer to my goal. The full moon is coming soon and this has always brought my most intense sexual feelings. Full moon nights are always the busiest at the video porn arcades and the most intense, sexually. The full moon makes people more horny and sexually wreckless. I know this from years of experience and participation.

I expect to feel some stress building up until the full moon passes. I am ready to face it now.
 
Day 17
Clarity Of Purpose


For me, the most important point in recovering from addiction is being clear about what I want. Do I want porn or do I want abstainance? Do you want to be fat and have health problems or would I rather be thin and healthy? Do I want to be the kind of man who masturbates or the kind of man who doesn?t need to? Do I want to be poor or do I want financial security?

So once we?ve decided what we want, now we have a purpose, and we begin to live our entire life, every act, on purpose, focused only on what we want. When you take your eye off what you want, you are merely looking at distractions.

In the book, ?Your Brain On Porn? there is a whole section titled Wanting Run Amok. If you contemplate this idea you?ll soon realize he has his finger right on the cause of the addictive mind, emotions and behavior. The whole nut is easier to crack when it is seen as an inflamed sense of wanting brought on by the imbalances caused by long-term artificial hyperstimulation. ?Wanting,? as a thing to itself, has been mishandled by the individual, me, you, the operator of the body and now has gone out of control. The situation is out of control, wanting has run amok

When we relapse and we go back to the things we don?t want, thinking we want them because they provide temporary relief from ?the wanting,? we are off purpose, off-track, we are experiencing instability of purpose. Are you being honest with yourself about what you really want?

A lot of people talk about how meditation saved them. Meditation is concentration of attention for a sustained duration. In time, with practice it can lead to a state of absorption in the moment, in the contemplation. This kind of sustained study yields powerful insights into what we contemplate.

Contemplate your sensations of wanting. Once you do this, you will begin to gain insight and understand what is actually happening more clearly. Take as much time as you need to work through your feelings of desire, craving and want. Come to terms with this inflamed wound of wanting and find a way to endure the worst of your time with it. Release your suffering and let it go. Accept the wanting is of your own creating and be responsible for it, know the wound will heal in time. Then you?ll learn to understand the difference between natural wanting and the inflamed wound you once felt so painfully before.

You might really want to jack off to porn and be a lesser man. Is this true in your case? Get in touch with what you really want. Are you being completely honest with yourself? Can you be completely honest with yourself? Are you even capable of being completely honest? Or do you lie so much you even lie to yourself?

What you want is now your preocupation as everything else is forgotten about. Either way. You have to be clear about what you want. Wanting runs amok because it will flow toward the directive of your honest intent. Be honest. What do you really want. Do you want a fake life, or do you prefer real life?

Only you decide the outcome every time. nothing else can. When we have clarity of purpose, our intent is clear and the decision is made. That decision is final.


Believing In Yourself

Another basic underpinning of success is having the ability to believe in yourself. Once you are certain that your skills are developed enough for the task, only then will you believe you are more than adequate enough to do what you want to do. Self belief is a confidence in yourself that you are ready to perform the task at hand, that success is assured on your watch.

Right now that task is overcoming addiction to masturbation. Do you really want to be a 56 year old man who masturbates and suffers all the debilitating effects, a lesser life, an impotent penis, a dissatisfaction in real life? Or do you believe in yourself enough that you can change that behavior once and for all and become a real man, who doesn?t need to masturbate?
 
C

cranm329

Guest
Thank you 40. So helpful. Will read your post several times to get the concept of 'wanting' clear.  Without invading your journal with my story, I can start to see why I have cravings in ways that I knew, deep down, were self destructive and unnecessary. Thanks too for your input and interest in others' stories in the forum.
 
Day 18
Learning To Forgive Ourselves

Working Through Our Own Deepest Issues

Today is:
Day 18 No PMO / Day 748 No Alcohol / Day 10 No Sugar

Mental Masturbation

I think when I have fallen off the wagon in the past and gone back to porn, it would start in my feelings as sexual tension, then lead to forms of mental masturbation, pornographic thinking and fantasy. From there the wound of wanting would become so inflamed that I would suffer insurmountable urges to seek porn and masturbate to orgasm. It?s like they teach you in Anger Management, it?s like a Train of Thought gaining momentum down a mountainside.

Anger and sexual passion are primal states, like hunger and fight or flight. Dealing with our most primal drives requires a balanced approach so we don?t upset the apple cart, and allow the train to head full steam, out of control downhill. Anger Management teaches us to recognize when the train of thought starts moving in the wrong direction and offers us an instant of time, an opportunity to separate who we are from our automated responses and inner-programs. It gives us a chance to take stock and recognize when the train of thought begins leaving the station.

When passion and powerful biochemicals run coursing through our blood, things can get out of hand in a hurry. It is possible to keep it all controllable by taking responsibility for our deliberate act of mental masturbation. When we understand how it starts, we can stop it before it gains momentum and runs off the rails.

Masturbation is a runaway train of thought, which like anger, gains incredible momentum quickly once it starts down the hill. My point is that mental masturbation is a failure to take responsibility for cleaning up our minds and healing the inflamed wound of wanting. Mental masturbation is driven by an underlying feeling of wanting something you believe you don?t have and this exacerbates the inflamed wound felt when wanting has run amok.

In order to heal this wound of disproportionate craving and wanting, this dangerous, out of control train of mental masturbating needs to be brought to a halt prior to leaving the station. You have to stop it right when it starts and know where indulging in that line of thinking is going to lead. We need to learn this lesson or the wound of wanting will grow even more inflamed.

It?s important to think with our prefrontal cortext and rely on our intellect, in order to be smarter than our thoughtless primal reactions. Mankind has evolved a more powerful intellectual mind since we were merely primal beings 300,000 years ago, when our primal drives were all we knew. Modern man has this exceptional intelligence now. Use it! Take advantage of what it can do for you in controlling the primal self.

Recognize the routine pattern of mental masturbation and immediately know, realize, you can?t afford to let that happen again. Learn that lesson here and now then experience the personal growth which comes from natural health and time working together.


The Universal Law of Acceptance

Porn is gone. It?s out of our lives forever. If there is grief, or sadness, shame or disgust with oneself, know this: if religion has taught mankind anything, it is the power of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the hinge on which the door opening to heaven swings. And, as I once said to a friend in a time of intense remorse, ?The hardest thing I have ever had to do is to learn to forgive myself.?

Forgiveness is offering acceptance, not blindly, but with humility in the knowledge of lessons learned. Acceptance is a universal law which paves the way to a kind of spiritual surrender that releases our guts into freedom from our bondage to judgement and pain. Forgiving ourselves for the mistakes we?ve made in ignorance rises from the knowledge that we are only human. Humility and human share their first three letters out of being derived from our deeply shared humanity.

There?s a much larger picture we have to ask ourselves to see. There is a greater good we need to accept and learn to live for. By forgiving ourselves for what we?ve done, we don?t thoughtlessly dismiss our painful actions but instead acknowledge having learned a very valuable lesson from them.

The gift of forgiveness offers us the freedom to move forward with personal growth and embrace our deepest anguish and pain, so we can begin working through these inflamed feelings to find the humility behind it all, our most human state of being.
 

Skins23

Member
Hey, thanks for sharing your story.  I appreciate it.  I recently join this site but like you I?ve been doing this since I was 15 with paper porn and it?s only progressed from there.  I?m mainly a porn guy but I?ve dabbled in the other stuff.  I prefer porn though.  That?s where I get the high so anything else for me is just a fantasy to enhance my porn experience.  I?m on day two.  Feeling motivated like never before.  Mostly because of the dopamine explanation and understating you need to ?reboot? for a period of time.  I found hope which is something I haven?t felt in awhile.  Again thanks for sharing your story. 
 
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