I am an 18 year old male attending community collage. I started PMO when I was 11 years old. Looking back on it all, I was addicted from the start, but I did not come to realize my problem until a few years after I started PMO. Around age 13 my dad found out that I was watching porn, and he tried to help me stop the only way he knew how, by putting content blockers on our computers at home. I love my father, and he has been a huge help in my life, but how naive he was to think a porn blocker could keep me out! I won’t go into details about how I did it, but circumventing the software was pathetically simple.
After that my dad never found out about the porn again, and life went back to “normal”, but there is a catch. As we all know here at /r/nofap (and /r/pornfree) addictions grow. By the time I was 15 I’d become a depressed, self-loathing, and hateful individual. What the next two paragraphs have to say is horrible, and I will carry the weight of these memories to my grave.
I hated who I was. I hated that I could not gather enough courage and strength to stop my PMO addiction. I tried to stop more times than I can remember, perhaps more than 50 times I tried. The longest time between relapses was one week. During this stretch I thought I might have been able to beat the PMO, but I broke down on day 8 and binged until my penis was bloody. This is who I was. On top of the addiction I became extremely physically sick. At one point I had to receive multiple emergency blood infusions to keep my heart from stopping.
I was a wreck in every way. And I helped kill one of the only friends I ever had. This friend came to me asking for help, I knew he suffered from extreme depression, and he needed someone to talk to, but I told him that life is shit and nothing matters. He ran his car off the freeway later that night, a clean cut vehicular suicide. The next day when I talked to his girlfriend she told me what had happened, and I laughed. I laughed when I learned that one of my only friends in the world killed himself.
It is impossible for me to put into words how disgusted I am with who I was. The old me was a monster. I am honestly surprised I never raped or sexually assaulted anyone. The only thing holding me back was shame. The one thing I held onto was my desire to please my dad. I did not want him to know who I was on the inside. I went to church every Sunday and Wednesday, I talked the christian talk and acted like I was fine. I became an amazing liar. I could get anything past almost anyone. During church I would sit and look at all the hot high-school girls around me. I would sit there hiding my erection as I fantasized about these girls.
This hell lasted for a few years until one day I decided to kill myself. I knew I was sick in the head, but I did not want help, I wanted an end to the pain, shame, and total self hatred. But I could not go through with it. I could not even bring myself to end myself! Do you have any idea what that’s like? Being so totally controlled by your own body that you can’t not even destroy yourself? And so at age 17 I allowed myself to be a slave to my body. I created a schedule: Wake up, go to school, come home and watch porn for half an hour, do homework, eat dinner, play video games, watch porn until I got too tired to continue, go to sleep, repeat. I became a robot. Following the same schedule… day after day.
Well, something weird happened about 3 months ago. Some random dude I had never met came up to me and changed my world. He talked to me, made me feel like I had worth and he asked me questions. Now, to all the liars out there, you know that a question is very dangerous. If you don’t have the right tools in place and a proper cover story, a simple question can ruin everything. Well, when A (my new friend) started to ask me questions… I felt too tired to come up with a good cover story. So I told him the truth. The next day, he introduced me to a friend of his, K. Well, K is the most amazing girl I have ever met in my life. In one moment I felt like something in my mind just snapped. I knew that I wanted to date this girl, but I also knew who I was. So I went to war. I deleted all the porn off my computers, I got honest with a few fantastic older guys I know, and I removed every source of temptation from my life. I decided for myself, for the first time in 7 years that I would do what ever it takes to make myself a better person. The rest is history.
After 90 days of absolutely zero porn of any kind (not even playing video games like skyrim), no masterbation, no edging, and nothing even remotely sexual in any way, I am a new person. I have changed from the deepest part of my being. Nothing is the same. I used to lie to anyone and everyone about anything, now I can’t get myself to say anything dishonest, even if I wanted to… I just cant. Also, I have self confidence.
Prior to October of last year I had only one friend, and we rarely hung out. Now, I have a core group of four friends who I would do anything for, and I am making new friends everywhere I go. This sounds silly, but the world is a beautiful place! I always walked around shoulders hunched and head down. Now I make eye contact with everyone and maintain perfect posture. I have girls telling me that I look good, and some people who knew the old me don’t recognize who I am anymore. One guy I have known for a few years had no idea it was me when we chatted yesterday!
I used to have horrible acne, no style, no personality, bad hair, and no ability to change who I was. Now I look in the mirror and I like who I am. I still need to gain a bunch of muscle mass, but other than that I am one sexy beast! Finally, I have drive. I will gain 25 pounds of muscle this year, I will get good grades in school, I will memorize a 1000 word poem by the end of next week. Not because I need to (although the grades I kinda do need), but because I want to.
So, moral of the story to all my brothers and sisters who take up the fight, if I can do it, you can do it. Seriously, if the fucked up piece of shit that I used to be can change, you can do it too. Now, the first thing you need to do if you want to start this journey is to get yourself a friend that you know you can trust, and lay your situation out to them. YOU WILL NOT win this fight if you do it all on your own.
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