Thanks everyone for the kind words. The past few days have been really rough and I am wondering if this is doing more harm than good. (Or is that just the addiction that wants me to give up trying). I feel total despair, lime I am completely wasting my time even bothering with this. Most guys here are taking this journey so they can enjoy real intimacy with a close female partner. I don't think that is going to be a possibility for me. My ex-fiancé told me I should not even consider a relationship as I will just destroy someone else's life. What I don't understand though is why I continue to be punished by being branded a child molester or rapist by having to be on a sex offender register. It's as though they don't want me to be able to have a legitimate adult partner and want me to be a recluse fapping to porn. Whe I started this journey I was excited as I felt I was doing something towards getting my life back on track and making positive changes. But if there is no incentive to make these changes it all falls kind of flat. I just can't imagine any woman wanting to be with me - a registered sex offender charged with possession of child exploitation material. I've found it hard enough to find work, let alone a partner. I have no self esteem left and I'm so scared of rejection or embarrassment that I don't think I would have the courage to date anyone. Would it be wrong to date someone knowing that at some point you are going to have to say "Hey, by the way, I'm a sex offender". Guaranteed to stop a relationship in its tracks. If my fiancé wouldn't stay with me I can't see anyone else staying. I think that is where the offender register is flawed as it prevents guys like me who have been punished from getting on with their lives and making a fresh start. It's like telling someone to keep running the race even though you've just cut their legs off - yes it's that cruel. I know I can't change the past, but I struggle to see how I can have the future I dreamed of. A wife, kids, family, intimacy, a good job - all gone. That's why I get so sad and I'm not sure being here on this journey will help me. FYI Astro, stories and diary entries are considered 'child exploitation material' is it is sexual in nature and includes someone under the age of 16 or under the age of 18 if you are more than 2 or 3 years older than them. So a fantasy written by a 20yo about a 17yo will get you convicted. (Someone was even convicted over an erotic Simpsons cartoon). Evidence against me included a journal entry and a video that is available on YouTube. My message to guys out there is don't go anywhere near anything that could be construed as 'child exploitation material'. It doesn't have to be anywhere near graphic, violent child porn for them to get a conviction, and it doesnt have to be images or video. I was advised to plead guilty for a lesser sentence but my life has been ruined regardless.
Assuming I am going to continue with this reboot I need to change a few things. My counter was for PMO and MO and I have been avoiding a reset on those. But I have been cheating with everything else. So I have added counters for P and M individually as whist I have not PMOed or MOed the past two days my resolve has been failing and I have looked at porn and masturbated too, but never to orgasm. So yeah, it's cheating on two accounts. So I have added separate P and M counters to keep myself in check. Counters are a strong motivator for me, I want to avoid resetting them at all costs. I guess the biggest reason I am struggling at the moment is that my reason for doing the reboot is unclear. If a real partner is not realistic then why am I giving up my virtual harem?
We have established that stopping porn might not help you in a number of ways. However, in what ways will stopping porn hurt you? I suggest that the answer to this question is: "There are no ways in which stopping porn will hurt me." It's time to do this, ZDU. Porn has already caused you serious problems. As one porn addict to another, I'm telling you, man, "You need to leave it behind--for good."
ZDU - Thanks for continuing to write and share. Don't stop doing that. This is an amazing outlet - and clearly one we all need. A suggestion. Let's redefine WHY we're doing this. You've made the proverbial carrot you are chasing "a normal healthy intimitate relationship with a woman." Absolutely nothing wrong with that. But I contend it is not the reason to be on this journey. Too much unhappiness comes from craving something, or being worried about things we have no control over or trying to forget about things in the past. None of those things are things that are happening RIGHT NOW. The answer seems to be so much simpler - and yet so much more difficult. Live in the moment. Be at peace with yourself in the moment. This is what the goal of this journey we are on might be about. This allows you to let go of the past, and not worry about the future. Be a better person and enjoy what is going on around you RIGHT NOW. Maybe that should be our carrot. Too frequently, P establishes craving and leads to regret. Again - emphasizes things we don't have, are worried about not obtaining and things we feel bad about in the past. It is never about being at peace with all the things you do have right now. Fight this fight....don't give up.
I've heard the 'living in the now' thing over and over but I just don't get it! Sure I can see that living in the past brings painful memories but if we don't live in the future we have no future. It might be okay for a monk whose needs are all provided for to live in the now, but the rest of us have to plan ahead or there's no food on the table. I find the live in the present moment thing far too simplistic and I just can't get my head around it. I have read quite a bit about suffering (having experienced a lot of suffering) and apparently it stems from ignorance, attachment and aversion. Frankly I just don't see how my suffering as a kid related to that! Again, too simplistic. I can appreciate that in the context of porn, suffering arises from attachment (craving). But what I don't get is that craving love and affection leads to suffering. Without any attachment we cannot feel love for anything or anyone. I love music - isn't that attachment? I love my parents - isn't that attachment? Yes I will suffer when my parents die - am I not supposed to love them so I don't feel pain when they die? Surely attachment (desire for food) and aversion (not falling off a cliff) are what keep us from pain too? So confusing!
End of Day 14. Still on an emotional roller coaster. Seem to swing from content to sad in moments. I'm really struggling not to seek comfort in my old porn and masturbation habits. I thought giving up alcohol was bad but this seems far worse. I started typing sex related phrases into Google. No P, M, or O but it's killing me. Thirty two years of masturbating and sweaty seven of those to porn of some description and now going cold turkey it's killing me. I meditated for 20 minutes today but the effect wears off and I feel the physical tension build again. I feel like I have blue balls and need to release. Others have said my body will release through a wet dream if it need to. I have never had a wet dream in my life so not sure about that. The only dreams I had when I quit were very disturbing sexual dreams. I really hope this improves soon as this is torture. I keep thinking someone will post and say its all a bad joke and we can fap as much as we like. Haha jokes on you. I wish I had something insightful to say but hard to focus with this sort of tingling or burning in my perenium. I feel like telling every kid I see "Hey boys, don't masturbate, the reboot you will have to do is torture"! Haha, week one was plain sailing compared to this. Just completed week 2. Week three I really hope there is some easing of some kind!
Start of Day 15. Woke 4am with an erection. It's 4am so what to do. Still half asleep. Started dry humping the mattress a bit with sexual thoughts, no one in particular, just body parts. No, wait, stop. This is not going to help at all. Besides I recently learned of the dangers of prone masturbation. Damn this is a minefield. I do feel good that I am into Week 3. Fourteen days would have to be the longest I have been without masturbation since I was ten. Hell, I even masturbated driving at 80mph and on Mount Everest. Not much would stop me. I can't say I'm feeling amazing benefits yet... well... any benefits actually! Patience... I am not a patient person. Perhaps that's because of my PMO addiction! Here's to another week without PMO. Sigh.
I woke up at 9am this morning, refreshed and feeling and was greeted with MW ... (it's coming back) ... I reached down to just make sure it was there and not in my mind, and I just lied there and enjoyed it with my arms above my head, thought of my recovery, was mindfully thankful and got up in about 5 minutes. I took some deep breaths and sat on the side of the bed, then my MW led me to the bathroom, had a piss, and it went down and my day began. I don't resist my erections, I don't ignore them, I don't stimulate them, I even sleep naked on purpose ... for me, I find this to be a way of embracing my recovery. My erection is my friend, not my enemy, and is a part of my life, and maybe in another couple of months, I just might have to share him with someone.
Astro: believe you me no one speeds on Everest! There's so little air up there you are reduced to a crawl. Day 15: I seem to be out of whack with my day count so I am just sticking to the day of the month as I started in the 1st. I had to leave the house at 6.30am so that meant no time to lie in and play with myself or surf! Was out all day so with no idle time temptation was not an issue. I think one of the reasons I am struggling is because I am resisting giving up PMO. I have been under this illusion that I am only giving up PMO for 90 days and then I will be allowed to PMO again as a reward. This was similar to when I gave up alcohol for a month say. It was hell because my brain wanted the 'reward' at the end of the period of abstinence. I think I have been under the illusion that at some point I was going to be able to PMO again and that's why I have been craving it so much. I needed to realise that No, it's not ever going to be okay to PMO again, it's final, it's not a trial separation, this is goodbye. I think being under the illusion that this was just a trial separation just makes it harder to stop the cravings. The other problem I think I have had is that *I* have been trying to stop my addiction to porn. Today I made the decision to surrender and not fight this addiction my way. I have had to admit that I am powerless over my addiction, that my life has become unmanageable, and that it's going to take a power greater than me to return to sanity, and turn it over to God as I understand them. So I have accepted that fighting this addiction on my terms is destined to fail and I need to admit defeat and surrender my will to my higher power. Understanding the neurobiology of my addiction is helpful, but that on its own is not going to help me recover long term. Only a higher power can relieve me of an addiction this powerful, cunning and baffling.
Hello ZDU, one question... I never was an alcoholic, but if I would have been asked to compare alcohol addiction and porn addiction, alcohol would seem to be a much tougher addiction to lose. Was it easy for you to leave alcohol behind? It seems to me that if you were successful with leaving alcohol behind, then you have what it takes to leave porn behind.
Scrapper, recovering from alcohol addiction was tough, but the harmful effects were more obvious too. My body was literally dying. Porn addiction is a lot less subtle, so I would say its harder to overcome as the harm is not as obvious. I'd say that the dopamine hit from orgasms is much higher than alcohol too which I would say makes sexual addictions harder to beat than alcohol addictions. I can't speak for drugs or how they compare to orgasms in terms of dopamine and reward. But the fact that I am in recovery now for 18 months is what gives me hope that I can beat the compulsive sexual behaviour addiction too.
I agree - it is confusing, and I struggle with this as well. Living in the moment doesn't mean NOT planning ahead. In other words, I will still make a contribution to my retirement account this month, and go to the grocery store for the week. That is all fine.... But while I'm, say, shopping for groceries, I'm going to try to NOT rehash my history of failures and mentally brow beat myself for that. I'm going to focus on the task at hand....buying groceries. I"ll think about some new recipies I want to try - or buy something new I've never had before. Sounds like simplistic drivel, I know.....but I think it helps prevent us from playing that same old casette tape with all of our bad memories, emotional baggage and self deprication over and over and over and over and over. Maybe it gets us out of our head and focuses on something we are engaged in right now. OF course, this implies, we are engaged in something "right now." And I think this is equally as important. The loss of the addiction must be replaced with something. Speaking personally (as I am REALLY struggling today) I'm identifying things to do INSTEAD of sliding back into what my urges are trying to convince me to do. If I can get myself into one of these new tasks - I'm going to immerse myself in that, and shut my brain off to the cravings, my past slip ups, or the worry I may slip up tomorrow. I'm going to try to live in that task while I'm working on it. Not even sure if I'm interpreting "living in the moment" correctly myself, but this is what it means to me - and what my hopes are for you. Don't give up....
Start Day 16: Been awake since 3am with sporadic but increasing M stints. I've had to reset my M and P counters :-( I seem to be slipping a little further each day towards MO or PMO. I really don't know how you guys manage long periods with no pleasure. Foolish me thought the first week or two would be the hardest and by week three things would be getting better. At this stage I'm finding it impossible to beleive that the cravings subside as they only seem to be getting worse the past few days and I feel I am getting closer to the point where I say to hell with this and give in with MO or PMO. It's 3am so distractions are few and far between. I don't have the concentration to read or watch a movie - I last a minute and then start masturbating again. I'm certainly not edging like I would normally and stopping well short of falling off the edge, but creeping closer each time, taking longer faster runs at the edge of the cliff. Damn!
Slipping is one thing, but bingeing is another. Get out of the house if you can, ZDU. Change the conditions that are allowing you to act out.
Yep BE, you're right. If I keep doing the same things I'll only get the same results. Change of habits requires change of circumstances too. Change the conditions that are allowing me to act out. Gonna have to make some tough changes like getting rid of the iPad for er, reading games and movies. It's too easy to surf for 'porn'. K9 is no help as I use anything as porn. Time to go old school and get some paperbacks. Sigh. Technology is so great but so dangerous at the same time. Perhaps I should go as far as ditching the broadband too. How bad do I want this? Clearly not bad enough.
I can relate very well what you are telling in your journal, ZDU. I have been slipping too for almost week now. I wake up every morning with good intentions but then cravings to m and edge carry me away. Its impossible to concentrate for long time to anything. This surely is hell. I have doubts that many guys here were not truly addicted after all, because it seems so easy for them (envy).
Start Day 17: Yesterday was HELL. I made the BIG mistake of edging to some non-nude pics. This raised the level of craving that I have had for the past few days to unprecedented levels. The level of craving is cumulative and each time you edge it ratchets the craving up another notch. It takes only seconds of edgingnto elevate the craving but hours for the craving to reduce. Yesterday I had what I can only describe as physical withdrawal symptoms. It was very similar if not the same as the withdrawal from alcohol I went through 18 months ago. With alcohol I would feel as though there was an anxiety chemical in my blood and if I drank alcohol it would dissolve the anxiety chemical and I could feel normal again. I used to literally feel the alcohol coursing my blood veins making me feel 'normal'. Yesterday was the same - that anxiety chemical wanting relief. I couldn't concentrate on anything and the compulsion to PMO was not just in my thoughts, it was in my body chemistry, that constant anxious unease. It was that bad I seriously considered going all the way to orgasm just so I could get some prolactin through me to relieve the craving, have a reset of dopamine craving so I could just start over on a new baseline. And I thought that if I was going to O I might as well just go whole hog and PMO and enjoy some of my favourite porn tubes at the same time. If I was going to crash then crash big time. I was going nuts and the only thing I could think of was to go to the beach for a swim and cool off. That helped and another effect it had is that the cold water together with the wet swim shorts and the breeze made my dick shrink away. Unexpected bonus. I stayed at the beach away from Internet and out in public, somewhere I couldn't exactly jerk off or edge. I went to a quiet part of the beach and saw only one girl walking her dog (admittedly hot - the girl, not the dog I thought the craving and anxious feeling was not going to pass, but it did. It just took a lot longer for the craving to subside than it did to ramp it up by edging. My experience recovering from alcoholism has helped me. What helped a lot was the mindset that I don't have to not PMO for the rest of my life, or 90 days, or a week. I just have to not PMO today. That's all. Just today. One day at a time. I think that has been troubling me - the thought of never being able to PMO again, saying goodbye to all that fantastic porn forever is too hard and I can't do it. But what I can manage is to just not PMO today. I broke it down even further and said I just have to get through the afternoon, I just have to get through until its time for bed. Now it's a new day and I didn't PMO. Now I just have to get through today. Lesson learned is that edging is FAR worse than MO.
HALT! Are you: Hungry - is your craving actually for food, water, sugar, caffeine - not neccessarily your addiction? Angry - are you angry or stressed? Resolve it as it will make you feel you deserve a 'treat' Lonely - are we seeking company in alcohol/porn? Get with some real people not a bottle/pixels. Tired - are you sleep deprived, oxygen deprived, nutrition deprived? Fix these first. I mention HALT as I skipped breakfast yesterday and didn't eat much throughput the day. I realised mid afternoon that I was hungry and I thought "gee, I wonder if part of these terrible cravings are just that my body wants some food?". Makes sense as I beleive it's the same reward system for food as for sex. Obviously we don't hit orgasmic levels of dopamine when we eat but it makes no sense to be craving food at the same time as craving sexual release. So I decided that during reboot I have to eat regularly and pretty much eat whatever I want. I don't want to have to deal with food cravings on top of PMO cravings!
