Hello people!
Well, I’ve been reading blog entries and posts from multiple users for weeks now. At first i didn’t really want to share my story, I thought it was unnecessary since there are already a lot. But maybe my story can help others, who are new into this, or who can relate to it. Or it can help myself. So here it goes.
Like most of us, I started at a pretty young age, I would say 12 or 13. Of course then, being able to see some beautiful woman’s breasts was enough. I wouldn’t even have called it pornography, since it didn’t contain any sex, just pictures of naked girls. Slowly it developed, and I can quite clearly recall my first ever hardcore porn video. Thinking about it makes me remember the sensation of watching it, being unable to believe my own eyes! The girl who was featured resembled a girl I was in love at school but didn’t want to know anything about me. So of course, now I’m aware I would use porn to escape my own problems and self-medicate against anxiety, but back then it was just something “everybody did anyway”.
Being unable to get a real girl because of my issues, porn was the ultimate paradise, seeing those beautiful girls with guys I knew looked way worse than I did, and “enjoying it”, being totally submissive, mere objects at the hands of those brutes. There was no rejection in porn, any girl could be “mine”, and when I got my own computer with broadband, I was “in absolute control” of those babes. If I wanted a skinny girl, there she was, blonde, there she was, brunette, chubby, petite, tall, Asian, Russian, black… you know how it is. The mind is pretty much a game of opposites, so, the less control you have of your own sex life in reality (meaning real girls), the more control you’re going to look for in the unreal world of the net (meaning escalating genres of humiliation and submission).
So you’re depressed because not one girl will check you out, so you have your revenge watching extreme porn. But that’s not the way you are. You think “if I had a girlfriend, i would never want to do those things to her”, but then again, why do such things arouse me? Am I a creep? deranged? So the shame, the feelings of absolutely no self-worth kick in, and so does the vicious circle. “I can’t get any girl -> Porn -> Depression, disgust -> Of course I can’t get any girl, I’m such a low-life worm, with nothing better to do than watch things that I hate but that totally arouse me, for hours, almost everyday… ->Porn again, a new fix”.
In the course of the years, I thought I was bipolar, depressive, even schizophrenic. I was also terribly arrogant, since I had to hide my low self esteem.
So unconsciously, when I tried to approach a real girl, this was the mental process while talking to her: “You’re extremely beautiful (since porn skyrockets your standards and makes you rate looks above anything else), so there’s no way I have a chance with you. And although I’m pretending to be a really nice guy, you have no clue of the things I’ve done to other girls (meaning porn), you would probably hate me If you did, that’s why I have to pretend to be extremely nice, I need to hide something about me that I hate, but that controls me in every way”.
So I had a major depression, suicidal thoughts would swim in my mind, thoughts of hate against my parents for putting me in this world, for making me think I was worthy when I actually was a porn freak who couldn’t get anything else than porn, where all those pretty girls would be degraded beyond recognition. I don’t have anything against people who willingly engage in BDSM, but as we all know, those 18 year old Russian girls who get to be treated like condoms are probably not in it for any kind of pleasure. There’s a reason why you don’t see Scandinavian girls in that kind of porn, they don’t NEED the money. So most of them come from eastern Europe or the states. Now when I remember those innocent eyes looking at the camera (looking at me) while being humiliated for all the world to see for free, I can’t avoid hearing her voice, saying “why are you doing this to me? wouldn’t you like to love me?”
The truth about extreme porn is, you know you are getting your orgasms from the suffering of an innocent girl who maybe wanted to go to college, who might would’ve been your classmate, a friend, a girlfriend… but ended up giving “brutal blowjobs” to old men who look like deranged criminals.
You destroy the image of femaleness within yourself. And you do it with pleasure. How can you not hate yourself after that?
So I lost my virginity to a prostitute (I had had ED twice with real-but-drunk girls while drunk myself). I don’t regret it really, since it did make me lose a lot of the fear of having sex, and she was an expensive prostitute so I didn’t feel disgusted by her. But of course, I would have given anything to lose my virginity to that cute girl I was in love with at school…
My life was a mess. I was fucking up everything at university, drinking four, five days a week, smoking a pack of cigarettes every day, watching extreme porn multiple times a day, destroying my relationships with family and friends, having HOCD, having bursts of rage, hatred to the world, I stopped composing music, writing, reading… Getting a girlfriend was my top priority, but I wanted a pornstar-looking girlfriend, every real girl was “too ugly” for me, and I was horny the whole time, just thinking about sex every time any cue would appear. I’m 23 years old.
I found myself thinking “I love it when they DESTROY them”.
And then something happened. It was the reunion of many things which took place in my life in the last months. I read the most important work of a very important philosopher (don’t want to name it, send me a private message if you want to find out), had a psychedelic experience, went to therapy, had vacations… and finally, stumbled upon Your Brain On Porn, found out about the rebooting experience. It was the famous “Day 1”.
I’m extremely happy to say that I haven’t relapsed once! I have been minutes away of masturbating, but it was always without porn. So, let me tell you about the rebooting experience itself now:
I decided that there was no going back to porn, by no means. I’m a average-to-good looking student who speaks four languages, plays three instruments, can make groups of people hear my stories and laugh… I just can’t be prisoner to my own basic instincts. The image of femaleness in me can’t be a copy of what the world tells me (advertisement), my sexual tastes can’t be the ones that porn producers offer me, I can’t be reduced to a lab monkey watching monkey-porn and self-medicating with his pleasure instrument while degrading himself to a teenager clusterfuck of anxiety. Have you heard the myth about masturbation making you go blind? Well, it’s true. Maybe your eyes will keep functioning, but you wont be able to see anymore.
No more.
Now, after almost eight weeks of no PMO, I’m glad to say I’m a new human being. Girls check me out. A lot (don’t want to brag here, I just can’t believe it actually happens). Some of them approach me and I don’t have to do anything. And now they are real, I don’t see a pair of tits, a nice ass, a “bitch who likes it rough”, I see a cute kind girl who might want to go for coffee of ice cream and have a laugh. Maybe something will develop after that… It’s not that I have lowered my standards, it’s that now, my standards are not based on how slutty and hot a girl is. Fuck that. I can see beauty in so many different forms now… real forms. I’m back at composing music, studying, my grades have boosted, have way more energy, haven’t drank alcohol since the reboot started and I don’t even want it, I take more care of myself, exercise…
When I meet a girl now, sex is not my goal. There’s no goal. The present is the only goal, so a cool conversation, or maybe just a flirty smile can make my day. The image of femaleness within me changed from a tortured, used “bitch” to an angel of calmness, inner peace and happiness. Anima, I’m sorry.
Of course I have had cravings, terrible ones, but I always think “haha, you’re not going to git it. You can ask for it as long as you want, old brain, but there’s no way it’s going to happen. Let’s keep doing what we were doing right now and forget those stupid cravings, they make me laugh”. I have stroked my penis a couple of mornings (I didn’t know I could get so hard for so long so easily!), getting close to edging, but I always stopped before it was too late. I’m saving it for my girl, who will appear in my life when the time is right. I can imagine masturbating at some point (not before Day 90 though), but there’s no way it’s going to be with porn. That is just out of the question. I have my life back. I’m not losing it ever again.
For guys reading this who have relapsed or haven’t tried rebooting, do it. After three weeks you will know.
I can’t thank Gary and Marnia enough. I just can’t. This is amazing. I love life again.
Ok so now i’m on day 58, I still feel it has been ages since I last had an orgasm and there’s always that time of day when I really, really would like to have one. Fantasies begin taking place, sometimes I push them away right there, sometimes I decided to explore them but only under the condition that they don’t involve porn or porn-related content at all.
I had tried to quit porn twice in my life before, the first time I did 28 days and the second time it was a month, but back then I didn’t know anything about the rebooting experience and its explanation. I just tried to quit because I knew something wasn’t right. I didn’t notice any improvements in those two times, and if I did, I didn’t attribute them to quitting porn, so I relapsed those two times and stayed with porn for years again.
The time (this time) I quit porn, now with the knowledge provided by YBOP and Reuniting and the rebooting accounts by other members, I haven’t relapsed. Not once since I took the decision of changing forever. If you read the first entry of my blog you will know how much has changed since then.
But this entry is about relapses and how I’ve avoided them, mainly because I want to help others. So, here we go:
Relapses might be fueled by two different things: 1) Hornyness 2) Bad mood, sadness, depression.
So the first cause of relapses is basically an uncontrollable urge to have an orgasm, being unable to manage the impulse which seeks immediate pleasure. It usually begins with something that is not related to porn. Its important to know that the cues which ultimately lead to relapsing might be part of your daily life, like advertisement, a magazine, an add in some gaming website, etc. If you are aware of this, its easier to recognize the urges before its too late.
Let me give you an example, I’m going to call the protagonist “Guy”: so Guy has a foot fetish and used to PMO to foot fetish sites, but he’s rebooting now, he’s on Day 30. He is watching television and sees and add for woman’s shoes. He doesn’t notice it at all, but the process of relapsing has begun. He thinks “oh, those are nice shoes, maybe my wife would like them, I’m going to check out how much they cost, in the internet”. He’s rationalizing it, making an excuse so he can go to the next step, which is sitting down in front of his computer. Now he’s really close. He’s checking for shoes for his wife in amazon, and slowly the urges begin. So he thinks “ok, I’m “just” going to watch some pictures of girls feet”. That’s step three already, and from that there’s nothing to the next one, which is checking out his favourite site, masturbating, having an orgasm, binging, giving again strength to his old porn habit, and coming down after the orgasm, with the feeling of despair, void, and failure again. That same feeling makes him think “yeah, I fucked it up again anyway, so let’s just have another binge”. Hopefully tomorrow is going to be Day 1 again for Guy.
But what would have happened if, when watching the add for woman’s shoes and getting the idea of looking for their price in the internet, Guy had thought “wait, wait a minute, do I NEED to buy shoes for my wife? right now? RIGHT NOW? what I’m I really doing? No, this is something else. Its the porn urges. Let’s go to the park and read a book”. He wouldn’t have relapsed. He was able to recognize the cue on time, even before sitting in front of the computer, and the next day wouldn’t have been Day 1 again, but Day 31.
BE AWARE OF THE CUES, THEY MIGHT BE ANYWHERE. Be patient, you don’t NEED to have an orgasm with porn, or an orgasm at all for that matter. Control the impulse, breath deeply and slowly until the urges go away.
The second cause of relapses is, as I said before, bad mood or sadness in general. Being in a bad mood usually comes with the necessity of getting out of the bad mood, and of course, the opposite of bad mood and sadness is pleasure. The quicker the better. When sad, we feel worthless, and our whole world view gets distorted, somehow everything seems grey, and even things like thinking about recovered porn addicts might make us think “yeah, good for them but I’m not able to do it, poor me, I’m 40 Days in this rebooting thing and haven’t got laid like them yet, this is not working. I did see improvements, but its nothing, I want sex NOW…”… and then we binge and relapse. The key about this is, when we are sad, for some reason we think we are always going to be sad, and we forget that, if we have been happy before, we can be happy again, since happiness comes from inside. We think that the world will be grey forever, so why bother rebooting?
You have to know, every time you feel bad, IT’S GOING TO END, at some point. You WILL feel better again, just BE PATIENT. Don’t let the feelings of no self worth control you.
We live in a time in which everything is fast, fast food, cars are fast, the pace of movies is fast, communication is fast (for example compare writing letters in the 18th century to chatting in the internet), so we have lost de ability to WAIT and be patient. But trust me, patience is probably your best ally against relapsing, maybe even better than an internet blocker or anything else. Patience is within you, an internet blocker is outside. You don’t need to block your internet if you can be patient and control the urges or wait until the sadness goes away. And one of the things that makes sadness go away the best is knowing you were close to relapsing, but didn’t. You won, again.
Another techniques against relapsing:
- Check out Uncle Bob’s recovery tips on YBOP, multiple times, as long as you need.
- Read long entries of other’s blog entries. Long entries will make you consume time and concentrate on something else.
- Close your eyes, breath deeply and slowly, very slowly. That low speed will be a contrast against the need of immediate pleasure and will give you time to think.
- Look at the mirror.
- Picture the future, recovered You. He is happy, he is cured, he doesn’t even need to count the days of the reboot, since it’s all part of the past. He is waiting for you in the future.
I hope this entry wasn’t to dry and that it can help others go through this problem. Guys, we can all do this. And remember, the only thing we have to do is NOT RELAPSING. That’s what it’s all about. If you have relapsed before, write for yourself how it was, what you felt, and analyze the course of the relapse. What happened between the moment you were doing homework and the moment you started stroking it in front of a brutal website?
Know yourself, be patient. Someday, you’re going to forget about counting days of the reboot, since you are cured. Hope to meet you there my friend.
BY – arthurhora
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