Yukon Joe's Journal - a musher's path away from a lifelong addiction

Hi everyone. I'm a 54 year old guy. Well educated. Professional. Never married. I have had a lifelong addiction to masturbation. It started when I found my father's porn stash. Dad was an alcoholic. Never taught me about sex. Mom was conservative about sex. Thought it was dirty.

Throughout HS and College I was actually shy around women but developed a vast fantasy life through porn. I kept my collection, first in a dresser drawer and later in a plastic tub. It was organized and indexed in binders with cover sheets. I spent hours organizing it and mb'ing to it. Wasted time.

With the coming of the internet I spent hours in newsgroups looking for porn that fit my tastes. The invention of color inkjet printers expanded my collection and I spent lots of money on cartridges instead of the magazines I used to buy. My relationships were affected by my habit. Girlfriends would come and go and I actually preferred pictures to the real thing. One girlfriend actually begged me to stop masturbation for a week to see if that would improve my sex life. I couldn't do it. Later we broke up. She found me looking for another gf online. Finally I went all digital. My porn stash was reduced to a thumb drive filled with downloaded pictures and videos. High speed internet and a wireless router allowed me to surf endlessly for porn on a laptop in bed. I would go on six hour surfing sessions every night. It cut into my recreational time and even my sleep time. Sometimes I would surf until 2 in the morning and then get up at five the next morning and go to work, guzzling coffee and soda to keep myself awake. It wasn't a healthy lifestyle. Earlier this year I found the No More Mr. Nice guy website and started reading some of the books suggested there, found YBOP and started reading more and more about my problem. I couldn't believe it at first. I had always heard that masturbation was healthy but this research proved differently. Finally in the beginning of July of this year I decided to stop masturbating to see if this would change my life. I stopped completely for three whole weeks before starting up again. The first time I pulled out the porn laptop for about 30 minutes but it really wasn't satisfying the way it used to be. The next day I came home from work and had one of my seven hour porn surfing sessions. The next day I woke up exhausted, facing a new work day with little sleep. I deleted all the porn on my thumb drive and deleted all the links to porn. I went another couple of weeks with no mb that ended this Monday night due to job stress. Monday and Tuesday night I started surfing to find the porn I had deleted. On Wednesday I decided to stop again and now I am documenting it here.

The good news. In the entire month of August I have only jerked it four times instead of every bleeping night. The new goal, to be documented here....is 90 days without masturbation.


Yukon Joe? When I turned 50 I wrote out my bucket list. The top of it was dogsledding so I went on a dogsledding trip. Since the first trip I have gone on two more including one at the beginning of this year. I have owned huskies as pets for many years.

 

Welcome aboard, Yukon Joe. We understand.

 

Thanks man. I have been lurking here for a while. It amazes me that I'm not the only one with this problem.

 

Welcome aboard! Congratulations on diving into this forum - you're in good company.

Binders full of women!

A fair number of us have shared that unsustainable lifestyle, from what I've read over the past few months. Back a decade or so ago, I was far too frequently doing much the same. Some nights, I'd be lucky to get 1-2 hours of sleep, and actually pulled a few all-nighters.

That's far out, Yukon Joe! Am hoping you're already sensing the benefits for yourself of so much time spent away from that compulsion!

 

Hey man. I invented the term before the that other guy did.

 

Invented ... and perfected! ;D

 

Welcome to YBR. We've all been there to some degree. The good news is that you can break free. Stay the course, you can do it.

 

It's the end of a three day weekend. I actually got four days off. No MB at all. On Friday I took the Sea Doo to the lake. Saturday I cleaned the garage then went on a tour with my motorcycle group. Sunday I took all the dogs to the dog park. Today, reading, paying bills. Working on the car. Updated my LinkedIn account. First time I had done that in months. NO MB!!

I almost succumbed Saturday night when I got back from my Motorcycle trip. I thought of my posts here, having to reset the counter. Decided not to. Just like that.

Usually I spend my days off on a j'off frenzy followed by mindless internet surfing. This time, no. I'm cleaning stuff in the house that hasn't been cleaned in years. Even cleaned the motor on my car. A Crazy Energy weekend.

What do I do with the time used to spend porn surfing? This weekend, just about everything!

 

Great report, Yukon Joe. Keep the fire burning, man.

 

That sounds like real progress.

 

Keep it going Yukon Joe, many of us tried and failed multiple times before finding the support here to help give us that extra push. As you have seen already, far from being the only one with this problem, your experiences are pretty much the norm around here. And the forum numbers are growing every day. The good news? It all gets better, just stick with it. You may find your entire life changing for the better in ways that will amaze you.

Again, welcome and congrats on your progress so far!

 

Yukon Joe,

Appreciate the thread here. Looked at the NMMNG forum and looking forward to more positive changes. Good stuff.

Re-b

 

I stand with you, brother.

 

10 days on the counter and things are just weird, weird, weird. Is is supposed to be this way?

No feeling down below. Flatline. Still have this weird energy in my head. Finding a lot of things to do with the time I'm not spending surfing for porn and that is a good thing. Playing the saxophone. Reading books. I still have the feeling that my brain hasn't stabilized yet. I don't really have much of a sex drive anymore. I don't even want to MB any more which is really weird. I feel like I have the monkey brain.

 

The first two weeks are chaotic, anything can happen. Just push through. The third and fourth weeks are better, but after about a month things seemed to get much easier for me. After that it's a gradual progression to clearer thinking, less urges to M and greater stability. There will still be challenges, but you'll have the tools to deal with them.

 

Thanks. That's nice to know. I'm in a weird place right now.

 

It'll get better.

 

Sixteen days. Damn.

I was wiped out by a bad cold this week. Could barely do anything but go to work and come home.
I didn't even have the desire to MB at all. I think I have gone a little overboard about keeping busy doing other things in order to avoid long MB sessions. I exhausted myself. Lots of activity last weekend. Less than flatline.

 

Great progress. Keep at it.

 

17 days. No porn. No MB sessions.

WOO HOO!! ;D