Age 25 – Improved eye contact, More social, Improved concentration

10 days ago I announced to the world that I accomplished 40 days of being clean from porn/fap and I will keep doing that every 10 days. Today marks the 50th day of my journey. I know that people here often say that streaks are not that important but they present a great value to me and I feel better about my self whenever I reach a decent streak.

Results so far:

-Improved concentration (I work on this also by limiting my time on the internet which is a concentration killer imo. and trying to read books instead)

-Improved eye contact

-More eager to smile and interact with random people (chatting with people in stores/banks etc.)

Problems to solve:

– Procrastination

-Huge self esteem issues that don’t seem be able to be medicated by abstaining from porn/fap only

-being too passive/lazy

-Fighting the overwhelming negativity that often haunts me

Tools that help:

– Excercise

-Cold showers (although you need to be careful if you have a low body fat like me)

-Walking

-Reading instead of browsing the web

-Doing what you’re supposed to do instead of procrastinating…

-Daily prayer

-Never EVER fantasize! This is the most important lesson from my previous streaks. It’s hugely important! Don’t look, don’t think about anything sexual even if it’s “healthy”

The fight is not getting any easier but I no longer hope for it to become easy one day. I just hope I will be strong and won’t fail in my struggle for a better life.

I would like to thank all of you guys for being here. You are awesome. I would never achieve it alone.

Good luck and stay strong 🙂

LINK – 50 days 🙂 Report

by wheresmydopamine


 

EARLIER POST – New to pornfree. Recently relapsed after 40+ days….

Hi.I am 25 and have been obsessed with porn/sex since childhood. I’ve just created this account and decided to join the community. An hour ago I relapsed after 40+ days of staying clean(My life record!). I really hope I will not end up repeating it tomorrow which is something that would always happen in the past when I faped to porn I would go into streaks that lasted few days…..

What caused me to relapse was heavy depression that I’have been feeling for the last several days. Since stopping porn and faping I’ve become more in touch with my feelings, especially the negative ones that I tried to numb with porn. Yesterday my uncle, who I’m close to, told me some very difficult truth about the way I live my life. It was some tough love that he gave me and sounded harsh but he actually tried to help me and I reacted like a stupid kid who is not able to deal with hard truth and yelled at him. I was angry for the rest of the day and felt like shit for acting like that, for being so immature.

When experiencing all those negative feelings, what I think happened was my brain reacted by pressuring me to watch porn and thus make my self feel better. Okay I know I am not writing anything original but I feel that I need a place to vent and people to talk to. I hope this place will be of any help. At the moment my concentration is completely dispersed and I’m feeling emotionally numb.

Sorry if I made some grammar mistakes. English is not my first language.


 

UPDATE – 90 days – The best present for christmas I could ever ask for

So I finaly made it to 90 days. What once seemed unachievable is now reality. I was getting pretty good streaks throughout the whole year: 20 something days, 30 something days, 40, 50 etc. Each of those streaks, however, ended with a very hard relapse. By a very hard relapse I mean I was obssesively watching porn and masturbating few times a day (or around ten at times) or night for like a week, , or waking up at 4:00 am and jacking off to porn for an hour despite having a busy and important day ahead of me. After every streak I would just go into this porn/masturbation frenzy which was leaving me exhausted, weak, having flu symptoms, detached from reality, isolated and all in all half-dead every time.

What caused to me relapse each time? Cheating. I didn’t watch porn or fap during my streaks, but I loved fantasizing about sex, oogle at girls thinking about all the sexual stuff I would want to do with them, I didn’t avoid sexual images in newspapers, internet, posters, movie scences etc. Often even purposely looked for them….All of those things made me feel a constant sexual tension and rendered me unable to focus on anything else. I was a sex obsessed zombie.

I made it to 90 days because after my last relapse I stopped cheating and started to treat this seriously. I finaly realized that what I needed was a complete abstinence from any kind of sexual stimula because I simply cannot control my self in this respect. The battle starts in the head guys, and it should end there. If you allow your self to indulge in sexual thoughts you’re going to fail. Hardmode is the only way if you’re very screwed up like me. Don’t buy into the whole faping in moderation is ok or porn in moderation is ok. Both of those behaviors are just terribly juvenile and no it’s not natural. Nothing will happen to you if you don’t drain your balls, they will simply drain them selves in wet dreams.

Porn fucked me over. It changed me, it made me isolated and lose a lot of good friends. I don’t know how it happened but the more I PMOed the less social I was becoming and eventualy I stopped hanging out with people who were my best friends. Porn made me worship sex and objectify women. It made me emotionaly numb, unable to connect with others, cynical and shy.

After 90 days I’m feeling that the healing process isn’t finnished yet but I’ve changed a lot for the better and I’m on the right path. I’ve learned to accept the pain that life brings and the pain of withdrawal which is still there. Accepting the pain is absolutely essential part of recovery, if you’re looking for an easy way out of it, well, there isn’t one. Pain=healing. Embrace it. I am also more social, more optimistic, more talkative, my focus is better (although still needs improvement) my habits are better and my relationships with women have also improved (I’m more outgoing, I don’t objectify etc.)

Although relapses set you back, they never make you go back to square one. Even if you binge as hard as I did. This isn’t to say you should not avoid binging, but I’m positive that although I binged in my relapses, the number of days that I had spent relatively clean was making each consecutive streak longer.

tips

  • pray daily (I believe God helped me)
  • Exercise
  • eat right (limit sugar! And get your self some supplemetns esp. magnesium)
  • limit your time on computer
  • Read (if you screwed up your focus like me)
  • Don’t ever think that it’s a legit need to look at porn or jack off.
  • Daily cold showers (Yes, they do help!)
  • Get shit done
  • Accept the pain
  • Forgive your self (really, one of the reasons I kept coming back to this was because I wanted to numb the pain of regret caused by mistakes)
  • pursue hobbies/interests
  • invest in your self

I wish I could write something smarter than this but hopefuly someone can find it encouraging.

This community is awesome. Thank you guys. This milestone wouldn’t have happened if you were not here to help.

God bless and stay strong!

by wheresmydopamine