thanks for your supportive words saville, bobjes and billy. day 22. been feeling good about myself, thankful, but with the realisation i arent always going to feel like this every day, not a downer but using the knowledge of previous journeys. we can all look around and see people we perceive to be in a better place, what is important is to be in the best place for ourselves. no matter where we are on our journeys we are moving towards that. it is great and humble to be surrounded by people who not only understand what holds them back but are changing their lives to become cured of this disease. as ever i wish you all my best
23. funny the importance numbers play in our lives. why is a day anymore important than an hour? a minute? a month?
24. all ok in this little part of the world. i have mo'd 4 times in the 24 days. its not important to me. what is important to me are the feelings of negativity. i am allowing myself to feel more positive in my outlook. being without the side order of porn is doing wonders for me. like it does wonders for many here. we know the answers and we are all moving towards a brighter future. no matter where we are at present. there are dark days out there beyond the bricks and walls of our homes. the state of the world and our seeming inability to heal it, or even understand it always made me down. whilst it still does, i have come to realise i can do very little to change it. what i can do is conduct myself positively and project that. that is part of what made me return here. i gave up before. i thought it cant be beat, what the point. the point is never to give up hope. we can rewire. and we owe it at the very least to ourselves. there are a lot of issues around christmas which can make us stumble, the biggest, for me, is how its turned into a 'spendathon' that happiness can only be produced on us spending money on presents, giving them to people who dont want them. also its a time for family. with my mother and father passed away and no contact with my brothers, sadly it'll be my wifes family. i dont feel the sadness i felt last year. i cant bring my parents back and im happy they are together again. wherever they may be. i will remember them with a smile on my face this year and thankful for the love they shared with me. keep on brothers. hang on to what helps and lose that which is no use.
still can't get used to calling you newleaf. Happy to hear you are feeling better and seeing the positive
Addicts look for excuses and holidays provide all the excuses you need due to the stress we sometimes feel. You've got the right attitude, newleaf. We create positivity and gets sent out like ripples in a pond. I MO'd at the beginning, the same as you. I felt like once-a-week was fine, and it was. However, I believe eventually going to no fap is best. About 3 1/2 months in I decided to quit fapping and the results have been awesome.
nofap, buddy, you can call me anything you like, i answer to most names and ive been called most in my life thank you for your words saville, very kind advice coming from someone i have huge respect for ,it means a lot. yes i agree with your point. after my last slip i decided on a new method for me. the main thing for me is to quit porn. thats why i am here on this forum after all. i decided this time that if i felt like mo'ing i would. in this short term i feel its helped me enormously to get back on the wagon. it has lessened the impact of going cold turkey and made this attempt much more controlled. i havent felt the pull to go to porn since turning the new corner and from where im sitting that makes a huge difference. i agree too that after time the thought of mo'ing will decline too. i feel a lot more in control of my emotions and a lot less bothered about denying myself something, which is a lie anyway, but it did appear that way to me.
day 25. my wifes last day at work today until early january. be a good stretch to rid myself of my mo-ing. my time here too may be limited so dont worry. i'll be fine. hope this finds you all well. soon be another year over. im glad and relieved coming back here.
day 35 thank you saville, means a lot coming from you the end of another year beckons. not sure if its been any stranger, stupid and unbelievable than any other year or if it just feels that way. just wanted to wish all my brothers here on the forum my very best wishes for the new year. i really hope that next year will bring us all untold riches spiritually and we all continue to grow and learn new ways in defeating our ills. thank you for all your advice and the insights your writing in each journal has given me, they have made my return here so rewarding. onwards to a better place.
Without P it's inevitable. I've enjoyed your journal, but I probably won't read it again until next year.
havent had much time to report over the holidays. ive flicked through a few journals but been to busy to communicate. alas ive had a couple of relapses so will set my counter back to 0, other than feeling a little shit about pmo-ing i feel positive that my much less frequent search for quick fix in helping me to feel much happier about my general outlook. i am not scared about healing myself, about missing porn. its just a silly waste of time and effort. may i be the last to offer all a happy new year. no matter where we are on our journeys, we are all heading to a healthier place. if it takes a lifetime, thats what it will take.
new leaf, Keep up the gallant fight. You are making progress, even if you somedays don't feel you are. I can tell from your post that you are turning the corner and on the path to victory over PMO. My first glimpse of the current victory of my 11 days free from PMO started about 2 months before I started my journey. You are losing your attachment and longing for porn, when you do fall you doing it now more out of habit, repetitiveness, and using it as a crutch. When I was sinking into porn for many years, I couldn't wait to look at it. I noticed that after praying hard in recent months and continuing to try to beat it, I still kept falling to PMO on a daily basis. However I began to notice about 2 months ago, I wasn't falling because I couldn't live without the porn but because it was a release. It was this breakthrough where I realized I was just looking at the porn as a crutch to deal with my problems and setbacks. I realized that no matter how much fantasizing I did in my head about these beautiful women, they were just pictures and not real. Keep fighting, and keep posting, we're all here for you and we'll all beat PMO together! Rex
thank you for your kind words and advice Rex. not too much to report, am busy creating a painting, a habit i really enjoy! dont have any inkling to look at porn. its good to feel that.
This may not be what you want to hear but I think for many guys it can take a year or longer just to get a handle on things, then you break through and realize that you absolutely cannot relapse and get well. It doesn't mean the first year didn't mean anything, it allowed you to wake up to reality, but just you won't feel much positive effect in that span of time (particularly if you relapse once every two to eight weeks)...if you have PIED you won't get better erections yet. Recovery does depend on a myriad of factors but that is how I see things.
40New30, Very insightful comments! The one thing I am very surprised at is that I never got PIED, with so many years of self abuse, that was never a problem. Even after going on days of marathon PMOs where I would sit for hours at a computer day after day, PIED never reared it's ugly head. My problem has always been stopping PMO. You are right this is something that probably is going to take a year or more to start seeing some real results. I went through a glorious 23 days when I was first on this board back in early-2014. When I fell, I couldn't get back on my feet, I went right back to daily PMO. I had a few runs after that where I would be PMO free for 4 days or even twice I remember making it about 6 days, however I always went back to PMO. Usually the most I could stay away from PMO was 1 or 2 days before falling back into PMO. I left this board in 2014 and returned on December 30, 2016. Since returning I have been 13 days free from PMO. This has been a difficult run, but it has been much easier than the first 2 weeks of my early-2014 run. I am under no illusions that I am going to coast through the year PMO-free. It's going to be a massive fight for me, in fact it's going to be the fight of my life. I am not going to rationalize a fall, I refuse to do that knowing that if I do, I will fall. I hate what PMO has done to my life. It's been a wrecking ball for many years. I have no option but to beat porn. I realize that the porn images aren't real just fantasy, I am not entertaining the thoughts, and I have no choice but to stay sober there's just too much at stake. My willpower has always been week, this time I am steeled and I am not giving up. I don't care how bad the urges get, I know they will pass. When I fell three years ago after 23 days it took me 3 years to get back on my feet, I can't afford another fall. This time the journey isn't about kicking the can of PMO out days, weeks, or months. There's none of that for me it's about me facing the facts PMO is destroying me and no matter how beautiful the women are in the pictures are or how good a MO feels it's all pure lethal poison. After a little more than 3 decades, I have had it with PMO. There's no going back to PMO for me. I pray that I not lose this battle. Rex
I really envy that you can put aside time for your painting. I'm looking for something I can do which gives me more 'flow'... something really absorbing where you get into a meditative state - hope things going well for you
i should say right at the start, there will be loads of potential of triggers. PLEASE DO NOT READ ON TRIGGERS POSSIBLE ... that said, those still with us here we go, i have some explaining to do. i waant to lay out my past so hopefully i can move forward. it will be honest to my mind. the trouble with life is that we cannot possibly walk in another mans shoes. we do not know what has brought us here and there. never mind others who have led much different lives. us? we have all landed here, taken off once in a while but landing. again and again. i have always had pornography. from late teens, magazines, videos, dvd's online etc etc. it has been there most of my adult life. right now i have a porn page in the background on my screen and I'm itching to go back to it right after posting this. and i will. chasing a gormless dream of nonsense fantasy. what normally happens to me is i give up porn for a few days, come write on here grow in confidence but my cock just dies. i feel so sexless. totally uninterested. its such a let down. right now I'm in the middle of gorging on porn. it excites me. gives me a feeling of worth. somehow. ive talked about it before but it needs repeating. these last 10 years have been tough, its not an excuse for my addiction to porn, because i was before. its now just the time and quantity used. it began over 10 years ago, my wife mis-carried 3 times, my father died of lung cancer linked to his work, i lost a dear friend to cancer, an ex girlfriend committed suicide and then my mother passed away, i had a year of work sorting out her probate. my brothers didn't really help when our mother was slipping away, they minimally helped after she passed away, but it was down to me to clear the house, sell the house, deal with the tax and probate. my brothers often sneered at my mother, they looked down at her and i was embarrassed by them. now, i haven't spoken to either of them for over a year. i have no wish to talk to them again. after my father passed away i got progressively dedicated to spice, at that time a legal high. still potent but not zombie-fying. i smoked an awful lot, it rounded off the sharp edges that left me feeling totally empty. without feeling. i wasn't proud to use it as a crutch but it certainly helped me, though slowed recovery. i have never really opened up about my loss's before.nobody asks me about them. i had counselling by relate here in the uk but it was useless. it helped me understand why growing up in a home filled with 4 males and 1 woman, emotions weren't top of the agenda. if fact never discussed. counselling helped me understand i had to discuss emotions not the tools to help me achieve that. i felt let down with my counselling. i have marched against nuclear weapons since my teens. i look at jeremy corbyn and finally believe in a politician who has his heart in the right place. to help those with less more and those with more, less. a perfect solution to the crisis of a manufactured austerity. i will always vote for an anti nuclear party. labour can achieve that. i waffle. I'm smoking a joint. I've put up an exhibition of my paintings up today. i have high hopes, we'll see, could prove to be a big stepping stone. i hope so. anyway I'm back on the weed. proper weed not manufactured. it aids my creative spirit. my wife says thats rubbish. but for me it isn't. it powerful stuff. I'm sorry to let you down. there aint no good luck story here. i call myself new leaf, because its a quote from my favourite film. billy liar. he says "i turn over a new leaf (meaning a page) every day but the blots keep showing through" i feel that line sears through my very being. that if i was cut open there in my core these words would be chiselled in stone. now you know a little more about me, but you cannot walk in my shoes. like i can't walk in yours. as the master writer charles bukowski had it carved into his tombstone "don't try" let it happen and it will happen. PS CAN ANYONE HELP, I WOULD LIKE MY PREVIOUS BLOG COLIMPOOL JOINED WITH THIS ONE, WOULD THAT BE POSSIBLE, ITS THE SAME JOURNEY
