60 Days In!

Phineas 808

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Staff member
Moderator
Day 60!

This is 50% or 1/2 way toward my overall goal of 120 days.

This is also 1 month and 30 days into this recovery effort.

These 60 days are without P, PMO, MO, and 99% without P-Subs or edging.

Also, this is without support groups (like AA, SA, SSA, other than RN), twelve steps, accountability partners, porn-blockers, or other disempowering methods (...if these help you, I'm not knocking them, but they should be only training wheels toward your [actual] recovery).

So, halfway from my goal, how do I feel? Really good, and very optimistic for the future. I know I could, even now, turn heels and fall headlong into porn, and other related habits, but I don't want to.

I have no desire to go back to porn, and if I see a scene on T.V. that's suggestive, or an ad on FB or elsewhere, there's a natural attraction maybe, but there's also an aversion, like, I don't want to tarnish, soil, or compromise my recovery efforts this time... The couple of times, so far, that p-subs (strangely) became an obsession were only episodic moments with no judgment, as they were ultimately dismissed, even if momentarily acted on.

Neural Chemicals and Habit change:

One thing I wanted to mention last 'goal-post' was that I passed what are neural chemical levels acquired during porn use:

DeltaFos B: 6-8 weeks (42-56 days, or between 1 month, 2 weeks to 2 months).

Hypofrontality: 8 weeks (56 days, or close to 2 months).

Having hit 60 days, I've surpassed these limitations concerning neural chemicals. I honestly don't think I was so addicted that I had hypofrontality (slowed blood flow to the prefrontal cortex), but who knows? For certain, if DeltaFos B was acquired, and I'm sure it was (it locks in our memory of porn use), that has subsided. And I feel that, too, meaning that the memories of porn use, while there, seem to no longer have strong feelings attached to them for me.

I'm confident and feel good about my overall approach, which is mostly not spent thinking about it. And while sometimes ambivalence toward p-use exists (between lower and higher brain, or between flesh and spirit), this is becoming less and less, and I'm excited to leave these habits behind as last year's news, and in the rearview mirror of my life.

Let's walk this freedom out together.
 

zaraki888

Active Member
Congratulations Phineas 808 reaching 60 days on your own! Impressive!

I would like to share with you that I learned from someone very important to remember, and that is: Never ever let your guard down This is an absolute must to remember!


Keep going and take care!
 

Phineas 808

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Staff member
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Thank you, zaraki888!

Yes, this victory comes after years and years of trial and error, discarding what doesn?t work and discovering what does.

I appreciate that you ?strongly? discourage porn-blockers, as I do. In fact, I reject the disease-model of addiction as a whole, for disempowering folk from what can be simply a matter of habit change. This, notwithstanding a jacked-up past, abuse scenarios, and/or decades of use.

Be well.
 

Phineas 808

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Congratulations to you, Phineas.

Above all, don't let your guard down.

Thank you so much, Robert7M!

I've only been able to come 'this far' because I'm not letting my guard down, and have changed my approach to social media, which was a big trip-up for me in the past.

But not letting our guard down means something different to different people:

1. In my case, it means a mindful awareness that pornography no longer (or never has) served me. And it's also a recognition of the power of habit, that if I do certain things to 'feed' urges, then it will lead me down certain already carved out pathways that eventually lead to porn use and/or masturbation. So, it means that I have to change surrounding, even not directly related, habits in order to change my behaviors.

To do the same old things, and yet expect change, is a form of insanity.

2. In some others cases, not letting one's guard down can be a disempowering view of environment or a fear of the murky unconscious mind. What I mean is, this is being overly fearful of being 'triggered', out of a fear that outward circumstances or sub-conscious hurts and traumas of the past, can just jump out of no where, and force you to turn on the computer, and perform PMO. Always viewing oneself as inherently flawed, always a diseased-addict who can never be trusted to be alone, or can never see that certain billboard on the way to work, etc, etc, keeps one in a state of weakness and hyper-vigilance and/or excuse making ('the billboard made me do it').

We have to be convinced, and this will help us bounce back quicker after a lapse, that the reason why I could or did lapse came from within myself, from me- I did it. 

 
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