SIX+ YEARS PORN-FREE!

[Phase2]

Great posts Lyon thanks for sharing--and congrats!!

[lyon03]

Good morning nation! I'm writing with a brief 9-month update. I haven't been very active on these forums the past few months simply because I'm starting to move on. This is, I believe, a very good thing. I've been porn-free for 270+ days now and it's completely changed my life. My reboot/recovery had the following phases:

1. Decision (October 29, 2014): porn is not an option
2. Withdrawal/Doubting (Months 1 & 2): brain went a bit haywire, wondering if my penis would work again etc.
3. Emotional Withdrawal (Months 2-3): learning to live life without my drug of choice (porn)
4. Emotional Recovery (Months 4-7): putting an end to toxic self-pity/self-centredness, letting go of the past
5. Life Reboot (Months 8-9): realizing life is more about honesty, loving others, being loved, and contributing rather than endlessly fapping to a screen.

My reboot was first about kicking the habit and getting sexual function back, however, those were merely the mechanics. Long-term reboot is so much more. Today porn has very little to offer me and I no longer need the escape as I've dealt with the painful issues/memories that fed the habit. Porn is simply no longer part of my life. I'll probably write again next month or on my one-year anniversary. I wish you all good luck in your personal journeys. Don't give up! Life without porn is so much better my friends.

[sodonewithit]

Nicely done.

[regguyinpa]

Lyon,

I reread your posts and they are really helpful. Thanks for being open. We all think about our dicks working. I am in day 27 and wondering if and when it will come back. I have had one episode where i masturbated without any aides or porn or anything. Just to see if it would work. I regret doing it candidly. I really like how you have taken a lifestyle approach. I find the most successful people have. Thanks again!

[GettingBetter]

This is an awesome journal. Really enjoyed reading your first few posts. Very inspiring and well-written (which I appreciate as an editor   I hope your life is still going well. I'll plan to employ some of the techniques you mentioned in my own journey. Take care.

PORN ISN'T AN OPTION!

-GB

[lyon03]

Thank you for your kind posts. I too went through the, "Will my d*ck ever work again!" phase and I'm glad it's over. I wasted a lot of time counting boners, obsessing about morning wood, etc. There was a very good post on this website that I'll paraphrase that went something like this. "I no longer obsess about my d*ck working. Without porn, it now gets hard before sex, stays hard during sex, so worrying about my d*ck the 99.9% of time when I'm not having sex is kind of pointless." I agree. Where am I going with this? Porn made me rather d*ck obsessed and I think porn makes us all a bit d*ck obsessed. After 20 years of hard-core porn abuse and marathon masturbation sessions, I obsessed about size, hardness, orgasms, and every other useless detail porn brainwashed me into thinking was important. Now closing in on 10 months porn-free, I've discovered that sex is just one part of something much more important: intimacy. In my experience, porn is to intimacy what action movies are to real life: pure fantasy. So your average porn movie represents intimacy about as much as an X-Men movie represents real life. This statistic may shock you. The average person spends 19 hours a year having sex with a partner. That represents 0.002% of each year. I'm now obsessing about being a better person rather than being a bigger d*ck. So let's build better lives rather than stronger boners. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.   

[regguyinpa]

its so true. We do get obsessed. Thanks again

[GettingBetter]

Thank you for your kind posts. I too went through the, "Will my d*ck ever work again!" phase and I'm glad it's over. I wasted a lot of time counting boners, obsessing about morning wood, etc. There was a very good post on this website that I'll paraphrase that went something like this. "I no longer obsess about my d*ck working. Without porn, it now gets hard before sex, stays hard during sex, so worrying about my d*ck the 99.9% of time when I'm not having sex is kind of pointless." I agree. Where am I going with this? Porn made me rather d*ck obsessed and I think porn makes us all a bit d*ck obsessed. After 20 years of hard-core porn abuse and marathon masturbation sessions, I obsessed about size, hardness, orgasms, and every other useless detail porn brainwashed me into thinking was important. Now closing in on 10 months porn-free, I've discovered that sex is just one part of something much more important: intimacy. In my experience, porn is to intimacy what action movies are to real life: pure fantasy. So your average porn movie represents intimacy about as much as an X-Men movie represents real life. This statistic may shock you. The average person spends 19 hours a year having sex with a partner. That represents 0.002% of each year. I'm now obsessing about being a better person rather than being a bigger d*ck. So let's build better lives rather than stronger boners. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.

Very good points, Lyon. It really makes me laugh at myself thinking how obsessed I can be about my dick and it working well. How foolish. And another great point: sex representing approximately 0.002% of a year but causing strife that devours weeks of our time. It's something that can really dominate your consciousness and cause so much grief. It makes me feel pretty childish and reminds me that I still have a lot to learn about sexuality and love.

In addition to being dick obsessed, porn (and more so my decisions to consume it) seems to have made me so isolated and self-centered in a sense. I shut out to world to get myself off. I would rather focus on myself — by myself — than be with friends or family. I thought about my dick constantly and how I should be using it like guys in pornos. Damn this shit is toxic. I thought my parents didn't want me to look at it solely because I was raised hardcore Catholic. But what they should have been saying is that this can screw up your sexual development, perception of a partner and your psyche.

Thanks again for posting.

PORN IS NOT AN OPTION!

[Aram97]

nice  bro! im happy for you

[Dream_nofap]

Great going...... Even i too get tingling to do MO but I know I have to resist till the end.....  Your posts are a great motivation..
Thanks for sharing! 

[lyon03]

Thank you everyone for your kind posts and encouragement. Today marks 300 days porn-free for me so I wanted to check in with an update. My initial goal was to try a year porn-free. Now almost ten months without PMO (porn; masturbation; orgasm), porn is no longer part of my life. It has absolutely nothing to offer me and represents a phenomenal waste of time. Getting down to more specifics, my reboot had three distinct phases:

Phase I: Physical Reboot

My first 100 days of reboot involved ending an almost 20-year porn habit. I made the decision to stop watching pornography back on October 29, 2014. Roughly a few days later I decided masturbation too was an addiction (or perhaps a compulsion) that I also had to stop. Around week three, I experienced heavy withdrawal with night sweats, shaking, and some paralysing migraines. Around week four, I flatlined with a shrunken and lifeless penis. My flatline lasted about ten days. Strangely I had almost no urges to watch pornography during the first 100 days of reboot. I spend most of my days working on several computers so I installed a K9 porn-blocker on my desktop computer but have nothing on my laptop which hasn't been a problem. During this period I stopped watching television (just too sexual), continued exercising daily, read everything about porn addiction, and got lots of sleep. Researching this addiction and leading a healthy lifestyle helped my body heal. But next I had to heal my mind.

Phase II: Emotional Reboot

During this second phase, the porn fog lifted only to expose the broken landscape that was my life. Now 43, divorcing, with three kids,  I believe that we mature rebooters are different. While a 20-year-old reboots to stop a habit, if like me you've been abusing for decades, you've probably built an entire sh*tty life around the guilt and shame of addiction. This emotional phase of reboot is where I believe most seem to relapse. I personally used porn as a (safe) virtual outlet for my sexuality. I was a closeted gay man trapped in a straight marriage who occasionally surfed gay porn. However, once I had high-speed internet I was completely hooked. No longer satisfied by just the virtual experience of increasingly hardcore pornography, my brain needed novelty. So I ventured into the real world of gay escorts and hook ups through apps like Grindr (the gay sex version of Tinder). I think of my life like a garage which I endlessly filled with junk only to close the garage door. During the first phase of reboot, I learned to end a habit. Yes I was getting physically stronger, however, I still had to open that garage door and start working through 20 years of clutter. For me that meant: therapy; separation; divorce; and generally dealing with the emotional causes of my addiction. 

Phase III: Long-Term Recovery

Porn was just a nasty habit, like smoking. I've learned that ending a habit is just one part of having a better life. My recovery involved more than just stopping a habit, I wanted to be a better and happier person. Look at it this way: you can stop smoking, but that's meaningless if your wife is a smoker, all your friends smoke, you're fat, you're trapped in a terrible marriage, hate your job etc. For me I needed a life reboot or else I'd just find myself using pornography as an escape again. How did I accomplish this? First, I had to accept responsibility for my porn addiction. For years, I blamed everything and everyone for my addiction. This was the wrong path. I've followed a fellow rebooter who started posting around the same time as me. He continues to relapse while blaming his wife for his porn addiction. I could only recover once I fully accepted responsibility for my addiction which then forced me to deal with it. Second, I joined Porn Addicts Anonymous (www.pornaddictsanonymous.org) which is a 12-step program for porn addiction. Having a peer group, a sponsor, and weekly meetings was exactly what I needed to work through my addiction. I've starting moving on from this group and the Reboot Nation which I believe is are natural and healthy steps - after all I can't obsess about addiction all day long as this too becomes yet another addiction. Third, I relearned honesty after a lifetime of almost pathological lying. Denying my homosexuality and lying about my porn addiction were all to easy for me. I came out to my ex-wife three years ago, my family last year, and my three children about a month ago. This was a long, painful, and yet necessary step in my long-term recovery. I've just returned from a week-long holiday with my three kids. This is the first holiday I've had with them solo since separating from their mother. My youngest is six and I can only describe him as pure love, joy and happiness. Looking at him swim, laugh, and play, it struck me. Like him, I was born with everything I needed to be happy and yet f*cked it all up. Symbolically I was five or six when I first mentioned to my sister and her best friend (Brenda) that a male lifeguard at camp was 'handsome.' Brenda shamed me, 'That's wrong!' and then I let society influence me into believing I was a freak for liking boys so I hid it. I used porn as an artificial means to be happy when during this third phase of my reboot, I realized that true happiness can only come from within. This is what I'm learning now.

My Recommendations

Here are a few things that helped me get to 300 days porn-free:

Phase I (90-100 days):

- Read 'Your Brain on Porn' by Gary Wilson. Knowing the science of porn addiction really helped me beat it.
- No Screens: Stop watching television and start reading again. Most TV these days is just low-grade porn anyway.
- Exercise: You're going to have a lot of time on your hands so you might as well use it to get healthy.
- Journal: Share here daily. Having a peer group saved me.

Phase II (100-200 days):

- If you are still struggling/relapsing, join a 12-step program like www.pornaddictionsanonymous.org. Get a sponsor, attend meetings, and start working through the emotional muck of addiction.
- Get professional help through therapy, counselling, etc. Far from a failure, this is a necessary step. 
- Read "Breaking the Cycle" by George Collins. 
- Be prepared to end (or at least redefine) all toxic relationships that feed your addiction. This may include your own family.

Phase III (200+ days)

- Define 'recovery' and live that definition every day.
- Be brutally honest and accountable with yourself and others. 
- Set long-term life goals and start fulfilling them.
- Start connecting with friends and family again.
- Continue living a healthy lifestyle with lots of sleep, exercise, and healthy eating habits.

Me Today

Porn makes us all a bit d*ck obsessed so I'll gladly talk about my junk. I suffered from PIED which improved around the 90-day mark. From about day 120 until now, I have masturbated from time to time (about 1-2 times/month) but nothing like the 2-3 times/day habit I had before reboot. Typically I masturbate the day after having sex which is often described in this forum as the 'chaser effect.' My genitals when flaccid also now look larger and generally healthier. Unlike most muscles, I believe my privates suffered from the daily abuse (and perhaps overuse) during my porn addiction. During the first 60 days of reboot, I counted morning wood and generally obsessed about size/strength of my erections and orgasms. Now I've come to accept that intimacy is more important than the mechanics of sex so my d*ck obsession has largely ended. As I wrote before, on average we spend 0.002% of our year (or about 19 hours) actually having sex so why spend 99.9% of our time obsessing about it? My boyfriend and I recently celebrated our three-year anniversary and we're now talking about him meeting my kids - albeit slowly. My career reboot continues (I'm self-employed) and I'm looking forward to new projects/challenges for the rest of my professional life. Sadly I decided I could not be friends with my ex-wife, we're too toxic a mix, so we're more co-parents than buddies. But we can still enjoy a meal together and have weekly chats about the kids. We are after all co-parents for life and it's important for our three kids to see us interacting like responsible adults. So that's me my friends. Just back from holidays, I'm off the to the gym and then back to work. I'll probably check in next month or perhaps when I've celebrated a year porn free. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.

[lyon03]

Good morning nation. I provided an update at 300 days and have just cracked 10 months (305+ days). This is a huge milestone for me and one year without porn doesn't seem so far away. As I wrote from the beginning, PORN IS NOT AN OPTION. I've been wondering, "What's next?" for the past week and found incredible strength and terrific advice from the book "Stage II Recovery: Life Beyond Addiction" by Earnie Larsen. lf you've moved from battling the urges to thinking about the rest of your life, I highly recommend it. I don't have a lot to share today but would like to quote Reboot's very own Yoda: "William" of the thread "Hello Gentlemen Now We Begin." His latest post is pure genius:

"Let me say that again so I am clear, "If done right, quitting porn will be the most painful thing you have ever done."    If you are not embracing the pain of quitting, you are not quitting, you are trying to keep it in your life, but control it.  Porn addiction cannot be "controlled"; it has to be eradicated, it cannot be coddled, it must be murdered.  You have to plan on the pain, expect it, anticipate it, know its coming, and even learn to want that pain.  That pain is your brain readjusting to the new reality and the new reality is you are not giving yourself a dopamine high every day, repeatedly, through exposure to artificial sexual stimulation.  That mindset does not have to last forever, but it does have to last for at least 90 days.  Don't try and quit casually, don't do it in your spare time.  During the hard 90 quitting must be how you define yourself, it must be your occupation, your religion, your reason for living, the reason you get up in the morning, the reason you go to sleep at night.  Those who most successfully quit porn are consumed by quitting, it is their passion, their reason for living.  Not forever, but for the hard 90.  Once you get clean you can focus on other things like...reality.  Take a look at your hand.  Literally, hold your hand up and look at it.  Is that what you want to be married to for the rest of your life, is that what you want to come home to with good news, or bad?  Is that what you want to take out to dinner and have vacations with?  Your hand?  If you have any chance of reconnecting with reality you have to destroy the addiction, destroy it.  It will not be easy, and it won't be pretty, so plan on hard and ugly right now.  This is my advice to you."

Amen to that!

[jkkk]

lyon. You kick ass. You're spot on. Don't leave us here, we need your words and attitude.

[lyon03]

Hello Reboot Nation! I'm writing with an eleven-month update and will likely write again for my one-year anniversary (October 30th). For those who have never read my thread, I am 43 years old, have used porn on/off for almost 20 years, was married (now divorced), and have three kids. I initially used pornography to explore my closeted homosexuality but am now out to both friends and family. Porn almost killed me back in December 2013 when I very seriously contemplated suicide. I am now 333 days porn-free and will never use/view it again. As I've often written: porn is not an option, and is no longer part of my life. September was quite easily the most challenging month of my reboot because I finally figured myself out...and it wasn't pretty my friends. You see, porn was simply a habit that quickly became an all-consuming addiction. In my case, I used porn to try to drug (or perhaps fill) a burning self-hatred because of my homosexuality. I've known I was gay since the age of five and yet always thought I was a deviant/freak. Now out and happy, I no longer needed the addiction and have spent most of this year rebuilding my self-esteem. But enough of the psychology, I'd prefer to share a brief roadmap to recovery.

STEP ONE: Find a mirror, look at yourself, and repeat: "I am a porn addict and my addiction is out of control." Keep repeating this until it evokes an emotion. Once it does, have a good look at your masturbation hand. [This 'hand' technique is thanks to a post by William.] Really take a long look at your hand and then imagine yourself walking down the aisle with a giant hand, exchanging rings with a giant hand, raising children with your hand, and sharing a lifetime of memories with your jerking hand. Accept that unless you kill your porn addiction, your masturbation hand will be your only friend in life. Ask yourself: "Is this what I want?" If the hand isn't working, imagine spending an entire life with a computer screen, or jizz rag, or dirty magazine. The point is I had to be mentally ready to move on and to do so I needed to be fully conscious of the wasted life I'd lead as a porn addict. 

STEP TWO: Get ready for the hell that will be step three. This won't be a walk in the park. This will be a heroin-withdrawal-like experience. Read "Your Brain on Porn" by Gary Wilson. Knowledge is power.

STEP THREE: Do the hard 90. Keep repeating: "Porn is not an option." This means 90 days without porn/masturbation/orgasm. It's not going to kill you but it will be one of the hardest things you'll ever do.

STEP FOUR: Post hard 90, determine whether you're simply ending a bad habit (like a bad diet), or battling a lifelong addiction similar to alcoholism/drug abuse. These are two completely different creatures. If you're battling a bad habit, after about 120-180 days porn-free, your life should be returning to normal and you probably won't need to keep posting on this website. So how do we determine if porn is an addiction? After your hard 90, here are some signs you're battling an addiction:

1. You continue to relapse.
2. You're still stuck in depression, guilt or shame. 
3. You're using porn substitutes like Youtube, fleshy TV, dating sites/apps, constantly masturbating, or you edge "but not to orgasm."
4. You've changed your counter several times in an attempt to rationalize yourself out of a relapse. 

The above isn't an exhaustive list, but you get my point. If you've stopped the porn, but still feel like sh*t and aren't really seeing an improvement in your life, your porn habit was an addiction and you now need to undertake an emotional reboot. If however you're feeling better and feel like you can move on, you've beaten a nasty habit and probably don't need this website anymore. 

STEP FIVE:  Prepare yourself for an emotional reboot. This will be longer, harder, and more torturous than your 90-day porn reboot. This means fully accepting that porn was not the root cause of all your problems. It was simply a means to hide from the root cause. Emotional reboots like mine meant accepting that something deeper caused me to act this way. Now you need to identify and deal with the real problem. Start by reading "Breaking the Cycle" by George Collins. This will go a long way to help you identify the problem or "original wound" as Collins calls it.

STEP SIX:  As an addict, you've surrounded yourself with people who somehow feed your addiction - including coworkers, your spouse and/or children. You need to accept that you've built an entire existence around hiding from something (bad memories, abusive parents, fears, guilt, shame etc). This means you'll need something or someone outside of your self-constructed 'comfort zone' to help you break free of it. You now have to accept that you can't overcome your problems alone, nor can you do so by blaming/abusing or being abused/used those around you. 

STEP SEVEN: Get a reboot buddy, sobriety partner, or sponsor and tell them everything. Every secret, every lie, every bad habit, every bad memory, EVERTYHING. If you're holding on to secrets, they'll just result in relapses so it's best to be honest/thorough so you can start healing. If you need more structure, try joining a 12-step programme like www.pornaddictsanonymous.org. If that porn-itch starts again, it's simply because you haven't exorcised the root cause of your porn habit so you need to keep digging. This may also require professional help.

STEP EIGHT: Stay proactive. The minute you stop going forward in recovery, you slide back towards addiction. Using myself as an example, I've read over 25 books (and counting) about pornography addiction, addiction, addiction recovery, long-term recovery, self-esteem, and I could go on. The point is I spent over 20 years getting myself into this hole so I had to accept it would take years to dig myself out again. Some other things you can do to remain proactive: exercise; learning; socializing...just balls out living again! You have to get out of the habit of feeling like sh*t in front of screens which requires both mental and physical movement. There will be aches and pains like when you start exercising again, but it's worth it.

The above is a brief roadmap to recovery based on my experiences so far. Please feel free to add to my list as many people on this website have more time porn-free than me. In closing, what started for me as a porn reboot truly became a life reboot. Now eleven months porn-free, I am not the same person I was when I last watched porn on October 29, 2014. Life is so much better without porn my friends so I can only encourage you to stay hungry in recovery...hungry for life really. Life is too beautiful to live it virtually. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION. 

[lyon03]

I made it! It's midnight here in Europe where I live. I've just made it to 1 year porn-free. This is a huge milestone for me. I'm tired so I might post more tomorrow. But before heading to bed I wanted to share two things: first, I want to thank all the RN members who have encouraged me over the past 365 days. Words cannot express my gratitude. Your stories, struggles, successes, advice, love and compassion all helped me get here. Second, I want to encourage everyone who is still struggling to keep fighting. There is no future as a porn addict. When I started this journey a year ago, I was a depressed, angry, wreck of a human being. Porn would have eventually killed me. I know it. Today my life has completely changed. While there are still struggles, mainly with self-esteem, life is so much better. This year saw me travel to Israel, Italy, and all over France. I've just come back from trips to Toronto (to see my family), NYC (business) and next weekend I'll be heading to London. Tomorrow I'm attending an early morning entrepreneurs conference, then an evening symposium put on by the European Union, and finishing with a romantic dinner with my boyfriend of three years. Am I bragging? Maybe a little but I'm also trying to make a point. None of this would have been possible if I were still stuck in front of my computer for yet another marathon fap-session. Porn = death. It's a simple as that. Granted it's a slow death, but porn would have killed me. Reboot = life. So I encourage all of you to keep fighting. You will beat this addiction. Fight it for your kids. Fight it for your wife. Fight it because life is too f*cking short my friends. And with that I'll leave you. Until tomorrow brothers. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION. AND IT'S NO LONGER PART OF MY LIFE.

[Brock Savage]

Well done and thanks for sharing your success!

-Brock Savage

[balancewannabe]

INSPIRATION!!!! THANKS AND KEEP IT UP!

[Brooklyn Jerry]

 You sure are a great inspiration to keep off the porn. I made it for a stretch of four months a while ago, and now just passed  a 50 day marker. I do know not watching porn has allowed me to have sex without Viagra.  I sure blame the Internet for this PMO epidemic,it made it too easy to view prom at a moments notice. I hope to be one of the people to beat this demon.

[lyon03]

Good morning nation. I'm writing with a 400+ day update. I think I've pretty much shared everything about my journey to this point so no more lists! But I did want to share that my life is so much better without porn. Today I'm writing about my current state of mind/well-being. Like many fellow rebooters, severe erectile dysfunction was a huge motivation for my reboot because I wanted to regain normal sexual function. After a 15+ year porn habit, I could no longer get hard, even to the most deviant and shocking pornography. I was masturbating daily but got no pleasure from it - just shame. In the final stages of my addiction, I also suffered from some other side effects of porn addiction like migraines, depression, and an inability to concentrate (something I still struggle with).

Reboot/recovery from porn addiction became my new obsession and I'm proud to share that I haven't watched porn in over a year. In the depths of my addiction, I couldn't go three minutes without a porn fix. I know because I timed it. In early reboot (0-90 days porn-free), I continued to obsess about sex, my d*ck, boners, orgasms, etc. But as I learned reboot is much more than just these mechanics. What started as a boner reboot transformed into a life reboot at about the 9-month mark. 

It was then that I read several statistics that changed my life. Did you know that the average person spends:

- 19 hours a year having sex (0.2% of a year)
- 48 days in a lifetime having sex (0.2% of a life)
- 1460 hours a year watching TV (16.6% of a year)
- 11 hours a day exposed to screens/digital media (45.8% of each day)
- 2 years of our lives watching commercials (2.5% of a life)

Why did these statistics change me? There were several reasons. First, porn was killing me. Sex, masturbation, porn and sexual thoughts were all obsessions, even though actual sex with another person represented just 0.2% of my time. This was a phenomenal waste of my time...a waste of a life really. Second, I had switched TV time with porn time so at the end of my life, I would have spent between 15-20 years watching pornography. How sad. Imagine what we could all do with our lives if those years were used for more noble pursuits (like family; careers; health/exercise; or the arts). I realized that my porn, sex, and masturbation addictions were like any other addiction: more would never be enough.

Now porn-free, it feels like life has colour again. What started off as a quest to have bigger, stronger, and more powerful erections, turned into wanting more from life. So how has my life changed? I no longer suffer from many porn-related problems like insomnia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety, depression, and migraines. Most importantly, I have found true love and for the first time in my life experienced true intimacy with my boyfriend of 3.5 years. Porn brainwashed me to believe sex was everything, when it represents a small but important part of a relationship. But to find a partner, you have to get out there which means getting off f*cking screens and living life! Love ain't gonna come knocking at your door my friends. I've also made more friends and have been more social in the past six months than in the past six years. In brief, I'm living again. But life ain't all unicorns and rainbows. I still struggle with concentration, particularly at work, but see concentration as mental muscle and am confident that daily exercise will bring my concentration back.

Reboot became more than not watching porn. For me, it was about rebooting my life. Thanks for reading everyone. Be well. PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.

[B-RYE]

I used porn to live a virtual closeted life. As a gay father/husband, porn was my only gay sexual outlet.

Lyron03,
I'm new here and just discovered your original post. First of all, congratulations! Your story is so inspirational. I can also relate to what you said about porn being your only gay sexual outlet. I, too, was married to a woman and recently came out as gay. We were in a relationship for 8 years total, married for a year and 8 months, but I was closeted and in denial about my sexuality. I finally came out to her this year and we got a divorce. It's nice to see someone else on here going through the same thing. I'm only on day 4 since I last PMO'd, but reading stories like yours gives me hope that I can make it from 4 to 400!

Cheers!
-Bryan

[lyon03]

It's now midnight in Europe and this marks 500 days since my last PMO. (The exact last day I watched porn was October 29, 2014.) I am humbled. Mine was a 20-year porn habit that almost killed me. In fact, it would have absolutely killed me had I not joined a 12-step program for porn addiction (www.pornaddictsanonymous.org) and then Rebootnation. Here is my first post on November 21, 2014:

"Here is my story: 42 years old, first discovered porn/masturbation around age 12, went from magazines, to video, paid streaming porn, then free and highly addictive porn sites. What was a flirtation became a full-on obsession in 1994 and heroin-like addiction in 2005. I'm starting this journal on day 23 of my recovery with a goal of hitting 90 days initially before stopping forever. My addiction has now cost me: my career, my business, my marriage, and was well along to destroying my relationship with my three kids. On October 30th, I finally said "f*ck this". I've not watched porn since and never will do it again. I've started a reboot with no-fap and no television. I've also read pretty much everything I could about my addiction, namely it's harder to give up than meth. (Scary!) But there are temptations, particularly in the form of rock-hard erections at night and geyser-like pressure because I haven't had an orgasm in roughly two weeks. I'll post daily to keep motivated. Glad to have found this site and very happy to share with others."

I'm not sure what exactly I can share that I haven't already shared in my many many posts but here goes. I'm going to write a few things that I wish I'd known back in October 2014.

1. This isn't about your d*ck, it's about your brain:

Like most porn addicts, I wanted to get my mojo back. Decades of porn abuse left me with severe erectile dysfunction. While I started my reboot because I wanted a stiff penis and explosive orgasms, I failed to realize that wanting these things was just an extension of my addiction. I've come to learn that I wasn't healing the flesh, but more mind and soul.

2. Porn isn't the addiction, dopamine is:

Through reading books like "Your Brain on Porn", I learned about my true addiction: dopamine. Learning about my true enemy better equipped me to overcome how I got my dopamine fix through screen stimulation. Understanding the science of my addiction was an integral step. Had I gotten bogged down in the morality of my addiction, I would have relapsed due to a toxic cocktail of guilt and shame.

3. I used addiction to avoid pain:

I believe that anyone who suffers from long-term addiction like I have has deeper problems that just jerking to a computer screen. That seems so obvious now but I didn't grasp that at the start of my reboot. Just like a cough can be symptomatic of lung cancer, my porn addiction was due to deeper problems. I've detailed these issues in this thread but there was no way I could prepare myself for the ordeals that I went through without my drug of choice: dopamine.

4. This isn't a reboot from addiction, it's a life reboot:

I think of my life as a table with a very delicate table setting on top. And the life I'd created had addiction as one of its legs. Without that leg, everything came crashing down. Without porn propping things up, family and career were just two of the shattered things I had to glue back together. I now see that my life wasn't ruined because of addiction, but rather than addiction was the inevitable coping mechanism for my ruined life. Without porn, I had to put myself and my life back together. It was necessary but damn if it wasn't pretty.

5. Get ready. This is a life-long commitment:

When I started this process, I naively thought I'd stop PMO for about 100 days, then SHE-BANG my life would be perfect. WRONG! It took me decades to dig this hole. And at the bottom of that deep hole, I simply installed a computer, chair, and lube for a thrice-daily tug to porn. Once I stopped the porn, guess what? I was still at the bottom of a really f*cking deep hole. It took me a relatively short period of time to overcome the porn addiction, but it's going to take me many years to change the broken thought process, bad habits, toxic relationships, and secondary addictions that resulted in my dopamine addiction. I'm getting there but porn addiction is a bit like a dysfunctional family: yes I can get away but this will always be a part of me. And like a f*cked up family, there will always be some reason to go back and try again. Just this past week I was tested by some family issues and I could feel myself inexorably going down the path to a relapse. Thankfully I've resisted because I've learned a different way of thinking and acting. But a two-decade-long habit doesn't die easily.

The above are all fairly clinical and perhaps a wee bit introspective so let's focus on something more practical. Through some exchanges with another rebooter, I'd urge everyone starting their journey or re-starting after a relapse to begin with the end in mind. That means completing the following sentence threads:

1. "Reboot/recovery for me means..."
2. "The root cause of my addiction is...."
3. "I get a dopamine high from..."
4. "Before relapsing, I start to feel..."
5. "The conditions that lead to relapse are always..."
6. "My safety plan before a relapse will now be..."

And here were my answers:

1. Reboot/recovery for me means loving myself unconditionally, being my true self, and surrounding myself with kind, caring, and loving people. I can only accomplish these things and attain my life goals while addiction-free.

2. The root cause of my addiction is poor self-esteem and a burning self-hatred.

3. I get my dopamine high from the following:

a. Any artificial screen stimulation, mainly porn, but also from darting around YouTube, and Facebook.
b. Meaningless 'hook up' sex with strangers.
c. Edging/masturbation.
d. Fleshy and mindless television
e. Creating chaotic 'life or death' situations in my life.
f. Conflict & confrontation.

4. Before relapsing, I always started to feel: stressed, angry, frustrated, worthless, and ashamed. I rarely felt horny before abusing porn.

5. The conditions when I relapsed were almost always when I was alone and online, particularly in the evenings. My relapses would start with some mindless web searching, then risky still photos, then I'd automatically type in a porn-tube website and click away.

6. My safety plan before I feel triggered or about to relapse is to fully accept when I'm feeling negative emotions like stress, anger, frustration etc. I share these feelings openly and honestly with this forum. Then I call members of my recovery network to work through them.

I want to thank the kind members of RN for supporting me these past 500 days. I couldn't have made it this far without you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. And yes my friends...PORN IS NOT AN OPTION.

[rainman]

Hi lyon,
I've read your first few posts and look forward to reading the more recent ones. thanks for the great story, and well done for doing so well 

Just wanted to say - Cheers for the reading recommendation. All the reading I've done has made me think and helped me. 'The Willpower Instinct' comes to mind about how we're programmed to have urges and are programmed to make ourselves resist them. So thanks to you, just started reading 'Breaking the Cycle' - fantastic stuff, and it's funny the author mentions 'The Power of Now' which I just finished reading. Keep on trucking!

R

[lyon03]

Thanks brother. Best of luck with your journey.

[kuzco]

Great thread; inspirational. Congrats on 500!

[lyon03]

Good day friends! It's been a very long time since my last post so I thought I'd check in on the eve of 700 days porn free. Given my 20-year addiction to porn, masturbation, and (later) sex, living without my addictions is nothing short of a miracle. And none of this would have been possible without the kindness and loving support of my fellow rebooters. So why am I back? I'm writing to encourage those who are just starting their reboots and to encourage those who continue to struggle with porn-related dopamine addiction. [If you don't know what dopamine is, get a copy of "Your Brain on Porn" stat!] My message is: don't give up. As I've shared in this thread, I know that porn would have killed me. On October 29, 2014, I decided to make a change and stop watching porn...forever. I won't lie to you. It was hell. Reboot was hell. But the rewards - like happiness, honesty, and intimacy to name a few - are well worth it. Giving up porn, porn subs, and all of the addictive behaviours that fed my two-decade-long addiction to dopamine was the most difficult and yet the most rewarding thing I've ever done. No matter where you are along your journey my friends, please don't give up.

Reboot is a bit like learning to walk again. It's all or nothing. Either you're up or you're down on your *ss crying. I was thinking about how my own reboot was like learning to walk (porn-free) all over again. I thought to myself: after a toddler stumbles, I've never seen a child throw a fit, refuse to try walking again, hide/isolate, blame their crappy childhood/spouse/boss, rationalize "I'll just crawl for one more day before giving it another try." No. The kid just b*lls out tries again and again and again until he/she walks. This was pretty much my approach to reboot. I came ready to do whatever it took to live porn free. I obsessively posted here. I joined www.pornaddictsanonymous.org, a 12-step programme for porn addiction. I participated in weekly phone-in meetings for porn addicts. I read 30+ books about porn addiction, sex addiction, and self-improvement. I got a sponsor and created a sobriety network. My motto remains: PORN IS NOT AN OPTION. This also meant giving up fleshy TV. It meant giving up all of the lies, the blame, the resent, and the rationalizations. It meant giving up masturbation, meaningless hook ups, and meaningless relationships. This is what worked for me after trying, and failing, for years to stop watching porn. No matter what our paths, we can only find freedom without our drug of choice: dopamine. 

After 700 days without porn, life has taken on a colour and texture that I never thought possible. Perhaps like me, you started your reboot to once again have big, beautiful erections, lots of steamy-hot sex, and porn-like orgasms. But I've learned that reboot was never about my d*ck. It was always about mind, heart, and soul. Once porn-free, I learned it was just the start of another set of challenges. But I was now up for those challenges. I'm now ready to face whatever life throws at me. I may not always succeed, but I'm always going to get up again and again. In brief, reboot gave me my life back. And reboot will give you back your life as well. Good luck my friends.