Morning coffee. Morning journal. Just tagging in. Reset myself this morning. Organizing myself to make this a better day than it started out.
The heathiest start to a day I've had since starting this focus on structure and routine. Nailed the entire morning routine. It started with a good night's sleep. Waking up without anxiety and wanting to get out of bed. Which meant I had no need to self medicate before my feet hit the floor. I have a busy day today but feel ready to attack it and not have it attack me. Actually, it started with a killer workout last night. I worked out outside in the hot sun for 75 minutes. As I finished a storm rolled in so I timed the workout just right. I joked with my therapist that his job is to shut down my other addictions and replace it with being addicted to fitness! In the midst of that sweaty workout, I felt authentically me. I'm not lifting as much as I used to but I worked out with solid intensity. I treated myself at the beginning of summer with a sled for my home gym. I finished the workout pushing that up and down the parking pad out back. Made me miss Rugby a bit. I'm going to prioritize working out every day from here on out. I felt good during the workout and I think it set things up for today to start as well as it did. RD
Nice work! Keep it up, RD! I also benefit a great deal from regular, intense exercise. It’s definitely helpful in recovery.
Simple workout yesterday. 5 different compound lifts. I was done in less than 30 minutes. No matter whether it is super intense or like yesterday, just checking the box, my confidence is rising as I feel stronger. With that gain in confidence my resistance to porn is also rising. RD
Second round of my detox fast. I do a 5 day fast once a month for at least 3 months. First round, I lost 15 pounds and kept 7 of it off. Drinking is forbidden. I will have no problem doing the fast for 5 days even though without it I might struggle to go 5 days without drinking. I wonder why I can commit to the fast and not drink but I struggle committing to not drinking. I am hungry and a bit grumpy even though I'm looking forward to accomplishing the 5 days and enjoyed the overall experience the last time I did it. RD
Amazing work! I've been trying to go one more day ... and then one more day after that. Phew. It's friggin' tough!
I am 99.2% certain, give or take, that I am Bi Polar II which is as I understand what we call manic depressive. I rode the wave of what is called a hypomania this week. I set the fast aside while I work through this. I self medicate at the extremes ... drink and fap to tone the mania down .. and, then, drink and fap to cope with the depression. We, of course, live in a world where I can self diagnose on a web site, order meds and fix it ... that sounds scary. Therapist appointment at the end of next month. Reset today. In the meantime, I'm going to keep on keeping on. RD
Morning coffee. It is a beautiful sunny Sunday morning! Long bike ride today. My bike has been in the shop so it has been a while since I've been out. I'm looking forward to it. I reset again this morning. Decided it made sense to drink a few beers last night and this morning just followed the chain. When I get back from the ride, I'm going to revisit the routine. On it I'm better than off. And I'm off. RD
Yes, then back to the routine. Whatever gets you through the critical moments. The "easy days" are super important, because they can and should be used to help get us through the difficult ones. Whatever it takes to say no and stick to it when "Otto Pilot" tries to take over. That dude needs to be deflated! View attachment upload_2023-7-30_10-7-57.jpeg
@Mozenjo, hilarious! I slept terribly last night. I thought I would sleep well b/c we rode 40 miles in the heat. I was wrecked! Home for a little dinner, a work call and then I laid down early thinking I'd get up early. Nope. Fitful sleep. Alarm went off early and it took me 3 hours to get up and get going. Don't know if it was the poor sleep, recovery from the intense workout or something else that triggered the depression. I have a long list of small things to do today. I did not lay awake and fret over them but getting up to do them was a part of the depression. This marks the end of what was a 4 - 5 day mania. So I just might have run out of gas, too. RD
Once I get moving the day is never as bad as the uncontrolled negative thoughts predict it will be. Movement calms the thoughts. Since I got up and started moving the day has been good. Depression still hanging around but it is manageable without bad choices. RD
I've been traveling for work. It has been a long while since I got behind a windshield and drove to clients. Weather was beautiful. Dog was safely in a kennel. My drive time thoughts were healthy. I think that a part of the story of my recent mental health drop was the isolation that working from home with a socially anxious dog, all married friends and no SO. Back home .. and that feels better after being gone ... with a 55 mile bike ride this week ahead of me. RD
Bike ride....sounds great RD. I love biking. I am able to ride my bike to work some days. It gives me an energetically tired feeling I call it feeling oxygenated.
Busy week. Totally off the routine I committed to. Overserved myself last night. Woke up depressed which put me into the mood to skip a hike with my friends to stay home and fap all morning. Over the last three weeks, I've had two 3-4 day manias. They were triggered by great news at work and feeling good from following the routine. I drank to suppress the manias but did not get to the point of overserving. Tough reality news at work yesterday. Anxious. Drank to calm the axiety. Overserved (11 beers and a pizza). Woke up feeling like crap. Not hungover but depressed. Fapped my way through the morning. Stuck in a depression at the moment. Reset the counter. Out with friends tonight. Planning to workout mid afternoon. Being social and lifting heavy will pull me out of the depression. I have 3 people that are pointing out when I seem too up or too down. I am much more aware of when I'm in the middle which I call baseline. I want to learn to manage my life at "baseline" while feeling good about myself in a way that it doesn't trigger a mania. Good thing is that I think I have discovered the pattern. RD
Reset my routine last night. I use an app called todoist to keep track of my tasks and routines. I didn't log into it last week so no wonder I got off track. Woke up depressed and stayed in bed longer than I should have. The to do list is going to have to keep me on track. It is a one foot in front of the other day. Gray outside but that didn't cause the depression even though it isn't helping. Light work day so it'll be a good day if there is no beer, no fapping and a workout. RD
When I restarted therapy we had our intake meeting and then scheduled 3 follow up visits. The first for 8/31. At the time, in late July that month didn't seem very far away. It seems so far away today. I'm holding it together but I'm not healthy. I am starting a fast today. The last fast helped get me set right; I'm hoping this one does as well. I have this great plan to move forward and I continue to ignore, not follow through, open choose not to ... everything in the plan. I feel no real willpower to change my condition. RD
We have all experienced that. I had a trip to London (UK) nd planned to make sure I didn't do anything stupid. Then I took no notice of my plan until my recovery partner and another guy on the site pointed out to me that I was indeed thinking of doing something stupid, and that brought me to my senses. it might help to write notes of your plans on your mobile or on paper. I find that I am more likely to follow the plans if I do this. ie think of each trigger and what you will do if it occurs. As you well know drink doesn't help. We lose any will power at all. You don't say what your manias were. Would it help to say more so that guys here could respond more in detail?
Day one of the fast is down. Slept 11 hours last night. I'm feeling the "keto flu" at the moment but since I've been down this path before I'm fine. When I commit to a fast I find it easy to avoid alcohol so I don't always walk away from the plan. @DBA, the manias and short (3-4 days). I've read enough about the bi-polar variants and I'm pretty certain I am manic depressive but its not been diagnosed. We did talk about it at the intake meeting. Throw the drinking in to calm the manias and the fapping to pull me out of depression, which come after enough drinking, and I've got a mess to deal with ... but I do know the mess ... the patterns are pretty clear .. I do have a plan though as I said yesterday, I'm fighting following it. The last time I really made progress with this addiction alcohol was not a part of the equation. And I had a partner in my life -- a girlfriend, who knew of my depression and my addiction, and who loved me through the downs and the temptations -- who I was highly motivated to keep in my life. After we broke up the essence of that relationship drove me to live mostly clean for a number of years. I dated others but it wasn't the same. I don't value myself enough to accept getting clean from porn and masturbation, managing the alcohol, getting fit just for me is enough. I should need a once in a lifetime relationship to drive me. I sometimes get myself focused on the next woman in my life -- if I get clean, sober, fit, etc. -- that I'm doing this for .. but because "she's" a figment of my imagination there's not enough there there to keep the motivation.
