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

Congrats, Yukon. Just stay off the slippery slopes.

 

You are past 90 days. The pay gets a lot easier this far down the road.

 

Back again. Many successes in the last year. My two year contract job was renewed for another year. I am dating again.

Every once in I while I slip and have an MB session. But they are much less frequent now, and I enjoy it much less. My electronic stash has long been destroyed so I have to go online and hunt each time. But the weird thing is that I don't enjoy it anymore. I never go past midnight edging and looking for new material anymore. I will usually land on the same old stuff that aroused me before and finish to that. It's almost like a job or a habit, not something I even enjoy. And if I do it even once or twice a week I still feel drained the next day and some of the old brain fog comes back. So I tried an experiment. I rebooted again. Starting Monday of this week, I went from maybe having a session once or twice a week to completely stopping again. And withdrawal symptoms started again. I started sleeping longer hours. The vivid dreams. Emotions coming back. Yesterday I had a morning erection. The first on months.

The only reason I went back to any MB sessions at all was because for the first time in my life I was losing interest in sex. I was actually losing interest in woman. I am seeing one now as a friend and motorcycle riding partner and I am not making any sexual moves towards her. I am not trying to force sex into the conversation during a date to find out if her kinks are similar to mine. This is simply a new way of relating to women for my and I am not comfortable with it yet. It feels strange. In the past I would approach every available women with one purpose and one purpose only. Will you be willing to participate in the sex acts I fantasize about. If not, blow her off and on to the next one. If so BINGO. Drop everything. My hobbies. My interests. My career. PURSUE HER! The we actually do what I fantasize about and it never really turns out as great as I imagine it. In fact I feel a bit guilty and a bit board. Is this all there was to it? It's done. It's over.

I realize that there is nothing I fantasize about in MB sessions that I haven't actually done in real life. I'm not exactly a virgin. Been there. Done that. Still kinda obsessing about it. And even a little bit of MB is draining to me.

This is not just about stopping the MB to porn habit anymore. I have already proven to myself that I can go more than 90 days. Then I can come back to it and realize that I just don't get a kick from it anymore. Now I am rewiring and not thinking of women in the same way any more. It's scary in a way. I am in uncharted waters.

The only way to go now is to force myself to evolve further. Reset the counter and abstain for as long as I can and just see where it leads. I have already been the MB to porn path. I know were it leads and I am bored with it. I fell back into it a little because it was habit. I didn't know what else to do. Now I will take a different path and see where it leads.

 

I'm back. One year later and somewhat different. I succeeded in going over 90 days without m to p. I thought I had succeeded. Out of boredom or out of habit I thought I could get away with a little bit of mb to p. I am in a strange place now. I went back to it but only about once a week and for a limited amount of time. Something strange happened. It wasn't as consuming to me as it was the last time. I'm not sure this was the case with anybody else but porn went from being forbidden to kind of boring. I would hunt for new and exciting material to edge to and I couldn't find anything I thought was new and exciting. I ended up finishing off to some of the old stuff I used to use over a year ago and after stopping would think to myself, why did I do that? It doesn't even excite me anymore. It was like reading a book I had read before. I already knew the ending. It isn't so great the second time around.

Last night I started cruising my favorite porn sites on my shiny new iPhone. I looked at the same old crap but it wasn't interesting any more. I started to reach down between my legs, grabbed it and then stopped. I didn't want to. This was really strange. Its not that I couldn't get aroused. I was just not interested in finishing myself off to the same old boring stuff I was looking at. For the first time in my life I started looking at porn for about 20 minutes and stopped without even starting. I looked at the same old porn for 20 minutes and didn't even want to unzip and touch my penis. This had never happened to me before. Usually, I would finish eventually after I started no matter what, even if just out of habit. This time I didn't even unzip. I shut off the phone and put it away. Then I grabbed a book and started reading instead. What the....

So I decided to come back, reset the counter and go for total abstinence again, for as long as I can. Maybe even this time for good. I did notice that even with a limited amount of MB that the old brain fog came back. So did the nervousness and depression. I found out that I can't go back to the way it was because even with the same porn it just doesn't excite me the way it used to. There's no big payoff at the end of the evening any more. I did go till one in the morning a couple of weeks ago just like I used to and was groggy at work the next day. This happened only once, not every other night like it used to but I don't want to go back there again.

The one thing that did scare me was how I thought about women. In the past I would fantasize about women I might ask out, or even women on online dating sites as being in the situations I fantasized about. Who I would date would be determined by who I could get into those positions. Now the fantasies seem boring to me. I have done this stuff in real life before when I was much younger. It doesn't excite me like it used to. I wasn't obsessed about women anymore. I was even thinking that if I never dated or had sex again that it wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen to me. I used to feel desperate when I didn't have a girlfriend and a little angry about it. It bothered me a lot. Now for some reason that pressure, and yes, I do consider it pressure, is gone. It is almost like a burden lifted from my back. It would be nice to find somebody but if I don't, life is still good. I am also more picky about what women I am interested in. I have rejected a few who were kind of dumb and didn't interest me all that much. In the past, if she would sleep with me and do some of the stuff I fantasized about, I would jump on in. Now not so much. I have never really turned down a women before. Now I am rejecting right and left on the online sites. I am well educated. I don't want a woman with a GED. I am an fairly good shape. I want somebody to ski with, not somebody who is obese and has trouble walking. I can choose.

In fact, right now I am more interested in working on my car, training my dogs are writing that making small talk with a woman I share no interests with in hope of getting to sex. I am thinking differently of women and this is scaring me. I have the funny feeling from research that if I cut out the porn and the masturbation completely that my desires will go in a different direction and everything about me will change. This is scary. But at the same time, going back to the old way doesn't seem possible either. Whacking off all night seems silly to me now. So does wasting time with women that bore me.

So my only choice is to move forward again. So that's where I'm going.