This is going to long. I warned you. And it’s also going to be uncomfortable, even painful and scary. Hope is scary. And one of the main reasons people struggle with addiction is because they are scared of what’s inside themselves.
I would also add that I have written this in one go, in five hours.
I touch on many things, because I believe the holistic method to be the best.
I have successfully removed addiction from my life once and for all, and I have sealed its door behind me.
However, I have had to go through a lot in order to accomplish this, and it’s not like my journey is over.
“Addiction” is not something which you can neatly, surgically “remove” from life; it’s much more complex than that.
Life is vast and complex, and beautiful. My journey will end with my last breath, not before.
But addiction is no longer a part of my life, and here I want to spend two (maybe a little more) words on this.
There is power in sharing.
Truth be told, I am not a particularly sociable person. Whenever I talk or write, I get to the point very quickly, and can’t really stand beating around the bush.
Is this a good thing? Wrong question. The right question would be How can I use this to the best? There are so many different ways one could tackle any possible subject, and addiction is a particularly complex matter. Honestly, I think that there are no simple matters at all, but that’s for another episode.
The issue is, there are as many people struggling with addiction as there are paths out of it. And just as many ways to talk about this matter.
But let’s try to make some order, for the sake of having a foundation to start with.
There is the straight-forward, purely theoretical “scientific” (ironical brackets) way of going about it.
Then there is the caring, healing approach.
Finally, there is the “tough love”, in your face method, based on deep personal experience, which is as painful as it is effective.
So be forewarned : this will be a no-nonsense talk. Results is what you want, hopefully.
And it’s about getting results that I will be talking. Not about soothing your fears or cuddling you.
Life is real. Addiction is real. And so are you, with your one life. The single greatest problem people with addictions face is that they are alienated from reality, at some level. They live an internal disconnection in their lives; they are fragmented, and consequently stilted in all they do. They are not whole.
As a result, they are in pain, which may or may not be one of the many things they are in denial about.
Understanding you have a problem is the first step; it’s not the last, it’s not the hardest. It’s just the beginning.
You will have to face yourself if you are to quit PMO, or any other addiction. That will entail pain. There’s no way around it.
You’ve used/still use addiction as a way out of pain.
It’s simply impossible for you to step out of addiction without some amount of pain, because your relationship to pain is the root of the problem.
Otherwise, you would have already stopped the moment you knew addiction was the cause of some pain in your life.
And if addiction is causing you no pain at all (read no “stress”, “issues”, “difficulties”, “anxiety”, “grayness”, whatever you wanna call it), then I would ask myself why are you here in the first place. Don’t think you can quit addiction without understanding it. You can’t. This is not a walk in the park, don’t treat it as such.
Better safe than sorry. Rome was not built in a day, nor without hard labor. Carve that in your head.
This is what I am going with. Why? Because it’s the way I did it. This is the only thing I can talk about. Direct experience. All else is irrelevant.
Which brings up the other question : if personal experience is the only way to truly understand the subject of addiction, how can anything I say help anyone else?
Is there any real power in sharing?
Yes and no. There is power, but it’s not in the sharing. It’s not in my words. It’s inside you, and that’s the only power that can give you the strength to grow out of addiction.
All I can do is write some words, so that you may read them. But the fact of the matter is, this is not about what I may or may not say.
This is about what you will to do with what I say.
This is simply a forewarning to say : many people will not like much of what I am going to say here. Yet, the fact of the matter is that, this is not about being popular.
It’s about being real. Reality holds both great joy and terrible pain. This is just how it is.
What people call “addiction” is really nothing but an extreme manifestation of the desire to deny this reality. And it is precisely because of denial that some people, if not most, will shun what I am going to say. “Strong words”. “Extreme views”. “You’re trying to fuck with my mind”. “Who do you think you are?”.
I am a human being. A human being who looked inside himself and at his life and found things he did not like, and that chose to change them.
And yes, of course, I made a “reboot” as well. I curb-stomped addiction. I grew myself out of it.
You may choose to do the same, or not. It’s up to you. It’s also up to you whether you will read up past this point or not.
Do you want to change? Then read on. This is how I did it, this is what I think.
If you don’t like it, that’s just as fine. I sincerely hope you will find your own path. I also hope that you are not bullshitting yourself, though.
This is not some mental trick to convince you to agree with me. I may well be “wrong”, if you want to use that word. But this is not about me.
It’s about you. I may be wrong. But seriously, how can you know what’s right and what’s wrong until you see it for yourself?
And if you don’t want to find out what really is the best way to “defeat” addiction, then I honestly wonder why are you even reading this.
I am trying to be of help. But ultimately only you can help yourself, by using the tools which are at your disposal.
What is the first of these tools?
Reading articles on rebooting?
Searching for scientific sources on the nature of pornography addiction?
Recovery programs?
Physical exercise?
Meditation?
Nutrition?
Reducing stress?
Psychotherapy?
No.
It’s you.
All of those thing are indeed very useful, each with its own nuances and in its own way.
But you are your most powerful tool. Look at yourself. Your mind. Your body. Did you ever stop to think about the fact that you are a representative of the most advanced and sophisticated thing that we know of in the whole universe?
And yet, with all of this, there you are jerking off to a computer screen. Don’t you find this a little strange?
I’m not trying to make you feel bad or anything. Guilt and shame are nothing to me. I have no more use for this stuff. What use do you have for them?
But I have them! Well duh, so did I. Until I shifted my perspective, and they simply dissolved like morning mist.
At the beginning I said that there is power in sharing, and I do believe this. The truth is, the whole of human culture is based on sharing. Pornography, too, is based on sharing. And no, I’m not talking about “that kind” of sharing. I know what the thoughts of a PMO addict are, what did you think? Or maybe I am still a pervert. That’s up to you to decide.
At any rate, the only reason humanity was able to go from the animal stage of swinging through the trees bordering the Savannah to having internet pornography is because of our capacity to share knowledge, information. Two brains are better than one, it’s that simple. The inflated ego may protest to this, but it’s just the how things are. Sharing is the root of culture. This is not rocket science.
I am what many would call an individualist, some would even call me a straight-out egoist. I don’t mind, honestly. After all, it’s between them and their heads.
However, I am writing this. I am doing this, really, because as much as I may be tempted to pride myself in having been able to do this “on my own”, the truth is that that’s not how it went.
I “struggled”(more on that word later) with addiction for about 2 years. Before that, I had been engaging in PMO day in day out for some 5-6 years.
Now I’m 19 (*duh, so young, what can you tell me that will be of use to me?* – shut up and listen), and have been porn-free for 84 days.
But that’s not a full reboot, you idiot! Yes it is. Numbers are just that, numbers. The quicker you free yourself of the idea that abstractions dictate the course of your life, the better.
For about one year, I kind of played around with the matter of rebooting. Oh sure, I was trying my best. Or wasn’t I? I was giving it my all. Was I?
I did all the right things, after all. I read articles, I posted on forums, I read books, I watched videos, I kept my streak. And I always relapsed between the first and second week. Only thrice did I go over two weeks, and then relapsed between the third and fourth. Sounds familiar?
Then, at one point, I decided that I had enough. That’s what we say, right? Durr, I’m fucking angry, I’m gonna smash this shit up!
Yea, right.
So, I started using a “Recovery program”, and on top of that, I removed all of my access to the internet. The only things which remained were a few choice “safe” sites, and e-mail. Other than that, I was in fact unable to surf the internet. Why did I do that? Because I could not control myself (picture this with a dramatic, whiny voice), and so the only thing which I could do was to block everything. I could not trust myself. TRUST MYSELF? ARE YOU KIDDING? I either give it my all and overcome this bastard by force, or I will never be free of this.
So, I did 156 porn-free. Great, right?
Wrong.
What I did was that I made a lot of drama, and accomplished exactly nothing.
Mind you, I did very well with keeping up my streak.
But there were two problems : first, I still thought in terms of “streak” (which, you may have already suspected, is quite a self-defeating concept which inherently ties you to addiction); second, while I did very well with not engaging in PMO, my life was a mess, even though I was not even aware of it. And it only worsened and worsened in the last months.
Finally, I relapsed again in December 2014. I simply could not sustain what my life was without porn, and went back to it, after 156.
I stress this in order to dispel the idea, still very popular, that in order to “quit porn” one needs to “reach” 90 days of no usage. That’s bogus, really.
The only thing that “rebooting” does is put your brain in a new situation (porn-free); as a result the brain adapts to that situation of lower sensory stimulation, it “reboots”.
I don’t think I have to explain here the details of how the brain works in relation to addiction, pleasure and habit.
If you don’t know anything about it I’d point you to yourbrainonporn.com, a site which treats that area in a specific way. Regardless of the specific topic of PMO addiction, I believe every human being ought to get a solid understanding of how his own brain, his own mind and body, function. Then again, you’d be pressed to find 1 in 10 people who is even remotely interested in this stuff, right?
Yet, that’s what you’ll need to do in order to “get out” of addiction.
So, that’s reboot. The thing is, even if you do “reboot”, there are two critical things to understand :
1) nothing gets “deleted” in the brain; rewiring does happen, mind you, but keep in mind that the addictive neural circuitry doesn’t simply get eliminated; it weakens.
2) you did get addicted in the first place, starting from a “natural” state; which means, you can perfectly get addicted again after you “reboot”.
Am I saying this in order to discourage you? No, I am saying this because it’s true, and I’ve lived it.
As i said, after 156 of no PMO I still relapsed. Rebooting doesn’t give you superpowers, by itself. All it does it restore your brain to a healthier state, which generally means that you do experience various benefits and improvements at a physiological and psychological level; this can then extend and branch in every area of your life, of course.
Does strength training (or physical exercise in general) give you superpowers? No, but it does give you various benefits. Does meditation give you superpowers? No, but it gives you various benefits. Does eating better give you superpowers? You get the idea.
I choose words carefully. I said “healthier”, not “healthy”. Rebooting will not “solve all of your problems”.
I understand why many people who want to promote the anti-PMO thing say this : they do because it’s a good way to get people’s attention; it is, in fact, a form of advertising.
Now let’s be clear. These people have good intentions.
But they create unreasonable, and ultimately untrue, expectations.
It’s just like with fad diets : lose 50 pounds in one week! People may well flock to these promises, but they are setting themselves up for disappointment.
Rebooting will not do anything for you.
Making the choice to no longer live a life of addiction will.
And yet, it’s not even that.
What you have to understand is that quitting addiction will not cause your life to improve. Improving your life will cause you to quit addiction.
Am I advocating that you stop trying to quit PMO? NO!
What I am saying is that PMO is not the reason you use PMO. Confused? You shouldn’t be.
When someone says that their problem is addiction, they are essentially saying that the reason they are addicted is….because they are addicted.
But addiction is not the problem. Addiction is the symptom. And yes, I say “addiction”, not “PMO addiction”; a quick look at the research will show you that they are all variations of the same patterns.
Again, I talk from experience.
(to be clear : read, and see what you can take from what I say; don’t fool yourself by thinking that I got it better than you, or that your problem is much lighter than my was; let’s get to the heart of the matter : is this about you proving something, or about getting help on how to stop engaging in PMO? your choice)
Throughout my adolescence, I have suffered from a plethora of “behavioral” addictions : internet addiction, love addiction, PMO addiction, video game addiction.
For most of my key growing years I have lived stepped in a seamless sea of escapism; I have never escalated to weird fetishes, and I only experienced mild PIED (I was unable to get much pleasure out of touch alone, let alone orgasm), but my whole life has been, for at least 5 full years, a loooooong string of highly ritualized addictive behavioral chains, which literally completely occupied my every waking hour. Zero social life. Zero emotion outside of escapes activities.
So yea, I can safely say that I know a thing or two about addiction. And how to dissolve it.
I should rather say “stop engaging in it”. Not “defeat”, “conquer”, “destroy”, “get out of”, “overcome”, or even “dissolve”. All of these expressions assume one thing : that addiction is something that you have to fight.
Everything we experience, we experience through our mind. As a result, the way we frame things shapes the way we act in relation to them.
If you believe addiction is something outside of “you” which you have to fight, you’ve already lost. Because all addiction is is a pattern of behavior used to manage your emotion, which you turn to because you are emotionally immature.
Addiction is a symptom. A symptom of emotional immaturity, of a lack of self-mastery, which all result from a lack of self-knowledge and self-understanding.
Addiction is something that you do. You do it. Addiction doesn’t have a life of its own. What is called addiction is just a behavioral pattern, a habit. A dysfunctional habit, yet still just a habit. A potentially very strong habit, but still a habit. Which has shaped your mind and your body, just like every other habit, really.
At a functional level, the difference between what is normally called a “bad habit” and what is normally called an “addiction” is just a matter of degree. Everything you do induces certain reactions in your brain, in your mind, in your emotions. Behind all the superficial layers, it’s all about the same thing : pain and pleasure.
Bad habits develop because you are emotionally immature, that is, you haven’t learned how to master you feelings; you are effectively enslaved to them, and let the quality of your life be dictated by arrangements of pixels on a screen.
You are walking down the street and you see a girl jogging with tight-fitting leggings that reveal everything. You feel a surge of sexual desire. You start fantasizing. You get hard, and uncomfortable. Throughout the whole period of time you spend outside, you think on and off about jerking off while fantasizing about this girl, or looking at pornography on the internet. Once you get home and everything’s quiet, you sit in from of the computer and masturbate for two hours straight while frantically searching for pictures which remind you of this girl. You finally orgasm, maybe even with disappointment with yourself because you wanted to go on but couldn’t even stop yourself from orgasming at that point. You caught a glimpse of something sexy, and your whole afternoon was warped and shaped by that. You now have to study until late because you’ve got a test the next day.
Emotional immaturity.
That is just one example, but I think it won’t be hard for anyone who’s got problems with this to recognize this pattern.
And to see that it basically means that you are, in fact, a slave to your fleeting feelings.
Why is that you have developed this habit, this addiction?
Because you don’t know any better. Why is that you don’t know any better? Because you don’t know what you want. And that’s because you don’t know yourself.
Honestly, I don’t believe anyone will ever be able to achieve lasting change from a life of addiction to a life of health without embarking on a journey of self-discovery. At best, all you’re gonna do is to “clean up” your brain, only to fall back into the same issues later on, because you haven’t changed anything. You may fall back into PMO addiction, or maybe some other form of addiction; maybe it won’t be an addiction, but it will be some other dysfunctional pattern of behavior aimed at managing your emotions, emotions you can’t control because you are living a life you don’t like.
That’s really the bottom line.
Wanna know why people fail in quitting PMO? Because they don’t know how.
They think that addiction is some kind of enemy that’s threatening their lives (or rather it’s actively destabilizing them and lowering the quality of their lives).
What they don’t understand is that their only real enemy is themselves.
Addiction is something that you willingly choose to engage in, because it’s easier to give in to it rather than suffer the pain of denying your urges. Oh sure, you do enter “autopilot mode”. After you give your permission to its activation.
Because addiction is about your choice, it doesn’t matter how long you go without it.
This is purely about your choice to take control of your life, or not.
You can quit addiction forever on the first day of a “streak”.
I have been free of addiction for 84 days. I should rather day, probably it’s been a little less than that. Why? Because during the very first week, I understood at a deep level that I was going to stop engaging in self-destructive actions.
At that point, it was just a matter of dragging my brain behind me.
Your reptilian and limbic brains may be deeply warped by PMO addiction, but what about your rational self, your higher functions of purpose, reason and choice?
What about you?
You, are your own problem. In fact, you crated your own addiction. Don’t blame anyone. You were ignorant, of course. And immature, of course.
But now you are an adult (if you have just reached puberty, then this is exactly the time where you have to stand up for yourself and embark on the path to become a mature man).
As an adult, you are capable of making choices for yourself.
So many people today, the vast majority in truth, undervalue themselves too much.
HEAR ME OUT : YOU ARE MUCH STRONGER THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE.
This is not a slogan. This is not wishful thinking. The truth is that people don’t get results because they are too busy thinking about whether they are effectively able to get results or not, instead of busying themselves with actually doing what they need to do in order to get results.
You are a human being. You are man, damn it!.
I am not trying to be to a macho here, to impress anyone, and yet that’s what many will think. I know, because I used to think that too. “it’s easy to act like a big man when you don’t have my problems”. Seriously, I wish I were able to reach my arms through your screen, pull you in, grab you by the shoulders and shake you while screaming in your ears WAKE UP!
That’s what I am tempted to do with most people I meet, really.
Wake up.
Life is so incredibly beautiful.
You cannot see that from a place of addiction. You can’t even imagine it.
Hell, you cannot see that even if you don’t have any addiction but are living life through the same patterns, albeit more “low-key”.
Here’s the thing.
One day you will die. Do not turn away from this idea. It’s reality. One day you will DIE. Everything you’ve done up to that point will be fixed. You’ll have lived your life, and expended your chance. You won’t get another turn. This is the one life you get. You’re not Mario, you are a human being, made of blood and flesh and bone, and one day you will die.
Contemplate this. Feel this. Understand the unfathomable and enormous significance of this. Every moment matters. It will never come back.
KNOW THAT YOU WILL EITHER LIVE YOUR LIFE TO THE BEST NOW, OR NEVER.
THERE ISN’T GOING TO BE ANOTHER CHANCE.
The reason I managed to quit addiction is because I chose to. Not because addiction let me. Because I chose to.
Because I chose to make the most with the time that I have here on this earth.
When I relapsed in december, my life was already growing more and more chaotic. In the following nine months I underwent an overwhelmingly powerful journey that changed everything in the way I looked at life, at the world, at human beings, at myself, at my life.
Between February and May, I feel back into all of my old addictive patterns. Internet, video gaming, pornography, everything came back. Or rather, I went to back to it.
The way you choose to interpret what you experience is fundamental; the use you make of words is of utmost importance.
So, for about three months, I engaged in all of my previous addictions and unhealthy habits.
Then something clicked. It was a subtle thing, a little, feeble thing at first, but something that had remained despite everything.
I wanted to live, and to feel better. And I understood that that was all I wanted. I was never going to stop, because I knew what I wanted. No matter the pain I would need to go through, if I could just feel better by enduring it, I would.
“Duh, that’s it?”.
Yes, it’s the core of who I am, and truly I believe this is the force which moves everything. But I don’t think offering you my views on the deeper truths of life would be of use here; I could, but I have to economize on words..
Some may simply call it survival instinct. Now that alone sends a shiver down my spine and awakens something deep inside of me. Something deep inside my human, animal being, inside my brain inside every cell of my body, inside every string of DNA, inscribed in each of the pulsing, beating, alive particles that make up .
But I think there’s even more to that.
We humans don’t only desire survival. That’s the first thing, and that’s what stopped me from suicide. Yes, several times in the last year (in my darker period, before summer) I harbored suicidal thoughts. And you know what stopped me from doing it?
I FUCKING WANTED TO LIVE, AND I CHOSE LIFE OVER DEATH, I ACCEPTED THE PAIN EVEN THOUGH IT HURT LIKE HELL.
You may think this is not “what you wanted” out of a “reboot” account. Get this : this is reality. This is LIFE.
The reason you still whack it to a screen instead of going out and getting a flesh-and-blood, warm, alive and moving woman, is because you are a pussy!
I was a pussy. I was a weakling, in fact!. I was incredibly weak, mean and petty. My life was a terrible mess, through and through.
But you know what?
You know what?
You are weak?
THEN BECOME STRONG.
You are slow?
THEN BECOME SMART.
You are immature?
THEN BECOME MATURE.
You are insecure?
THEN BECOME CONFIDENT.
How? Through other people.
You know, I can’t help but feel elated when I look at websites like reboot blueprint, nofapacademy, yourbrainrebalanced, and I could go on.
They are a testament to the strength of the human spirit. They are a shining example of the fact that people are, indeed, much stronger than we would give them credit for.
The simple fact that you have chosen to remove addiction from your life clearly says that you are not satisfied with your current situation. You want your life to improve. You want to live, more.
This is the root of everything. And this is also what brings human beings together, this is what gives birth to communities such as those.
People are not sheep. People have dreams, and the power to make them true.
They only need to be shown that they can, indeed, succeed in achieving what they want.
We come back to the starting point. Sharing. I wouldn’t be writing this now if I had not been helped by other people.
Humanity’s strongest asset is our capacity for communication. This capacity is the basis for all of culture. What do you think culture is, by the way?
Brief ancient latin lesson, for those who are not into languages : culture comes from the latin verb colo, to cultivate, to tend to.
Everything you have has been handed to you, but for a very few things. The device you are using to read this, are you the one who created it? Who invented it?
The food you eat. Did you raise your own poultry? Did you cultivate your own fruit? Did you manufacture your own soda?
No, it’s all thanks to other human beings.
You see, we are one. Not in a literal sense, mind you; even then, whether you see it as a literal or non-literal interpretation really comes down to….interpretation of the word “one”. And yes, I you hadn’t yet taken up the hint, I study language and literature.
I am a decidedly individualistic person, and yet at the same time I also deeply feel this connection between all things, and most especially between all human beings.
I can’t say that I personally care for every single human being. Care is an emotional and psychological sensation which is, by its nature, limited in scope.
Yet, here’s how I see it : the world is my home. The whole universe, really, is my home. This planet is my home, and I share it with an astonishing number of other beings just like me. I deeply feel my individuality, yet I can’t deny my indestructible tie to humankind. I am humankind, and so are you.
And if what I do can help make this place a nicer place, I am here.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have taken the time to write this.
I wrote this knowing that words are desperately limited; meaning, there is no way that I can let you see what I see, know what I have learned through my journey, feel the sheer beauty of all of this, the joy, the peace, the roundedness, the unity, the happiness, the….words just don’t cut it.
This is the thing.
Do you want to live a happy, fulfilling, beautiful, healthy and FULL life?
That is the question. Nietzsche said “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”. This is not in order to make a random reference to Nietzsche, but to highlight this : if you really look inside yourself without fear, seek what it is that you want in life and commit EVERY SINGLE DAY to making a reality out of that, then there is NO WAY addiction will be a problem for you.
I mean really. Addiction? Pfft!
I know some of you may find this preposterous, but that’s just how I feel about it? Wanking to a computer screen? Pah, fuck that!
I’m out of that shit, I want to feel warmth against my skin along with sexual pleasure.
Pornography simply is no longer a threat to me. Because reality is so much better.
As long as you fear addiction, as long as you fear “triggers”, you are still in a star where you have not yet made a decision.
And as a result of that, no matter how hard you may try, you will fail. Over, and over, and over.
PMO is nothing else than a way to escape reality, as with any other addiction. You may not be able to see it now, but things are that much better on the other side.
Mind you. This does not mean that quitting PMO will by itself “fix you”. Absolutely not.
But I believe that the only way to truly kick addictive patterns out of your life is to start from your very deepest being, from your very deepest desires, and growing outwards from that. Addiction simply gets swept away by the tidal wave of your will to LIVE.
UNDERSTAND THIS : ADDICTION IS A WIMPY, PITIFUL, PATHETIC LITTLE THING IN COMPARISON TO THE TRULY HEALTHY STATE OF THE HUMAN BEING.
The life of addiction stands to the life of health like a soccer simulation game stands to playing real soccer. It can’t fucking compare! I may swear a lot, but I fully mean it!
Swearing does have a point. And yes, I do believe you are prudish if you balk at some emphatic swearing. Language is alive, as I am alive!
Wanna feel alive? Get your life back! Get back in the driver’s seat of your life!
What you do by letting addiction rule your life is choosing to give your power over your life to it. You are, in fact, selling yourself for immediate pleasure.
ADDICTION HAS NO POWER BUT THE POWER YOU GIVE IT. THE POWER IS YOURS, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LIFE AND GET BACK IN CONTROL.
Duh, I am ranting, am I not? I’m restraining myself, I swear it, and you better believe it.
We were talking about getting help from other people.
Here’s the deal : people are not stupid. Our cynical selves may get a kick out of saying they are, but the really aren’t. Why do I say this? Look around. Again, look at what we’ve accomplished. Look at this very site, and to the multitudes of others, dedicated to helping people break free of a toxic, self-destructive malady.
We have created pornography, we have created pornography addiction, and we have created ways to grow out of it (I stress, grow out; you don’t win addiction, you grow out of it; addiction is simply a result of human immaturity; grow, work on improving your life all-around starting from your deepest being, and your organism will simply spit addiction out); do you see the beauty of this?
We are self-regulating, just like any other living being on earth. “Society is going to shit”. Not really, if you really go beyond “what people say” and “what television say” you will rather find that things are improving, and at a quick rate.
Again, just think about the existence of this very same website.
And if you don’t feel the power of all of this, of the rising tide of people waking up and raising their heads high to march to better lives and better futures for themselves and for the whole of humankind and the Earth itself, then I guess you really need me going there and giving you a good shake!
You cannot do this on your own. In fact, you depend on others for almost everything. Otherwise you’d have to be a hermit living in the wilderness, and even then you’d depend on nature.
Do not refrain from asking for the help you need. We all need it, and you will find that just as you are much stronger than you think you are, people are much more well-disposed towards each other than you might think. You just have to see it for yourself. But you have to ACT.
Stop bullshitting yourself. Move your ego out of the way.
If you were able to succeed by doing it the way you’ve been doing it until now, you would have nailed it by now. But if you are reading this, chances are that you haven’t.
Let other people help you. You are not alone. You don’t NEED to isolate yourself.
Remember that even when you are just reading a book you are communicating with an other. Just, stop trying to figure it all out on your own in your own mind, without adding any new data. You’l only keep churning out the same answers. If something doesn’t work, change approach.
Don’t look at “quitting PMO” as “THE THING THAT WILL FIX EVERYTHING”. Look at it as the litmus test of how committed you are to living a beautiful life, pain and hardship be damned!
I don’t know what you will take from this long monologue of mine. I tried to give it all, but the truth is that I could go on writing and writing for whole days (I already write daily, in fact); yet, that would be totally pointless. In the end, my wall of text would just scare the sit out of you and you’d end up not even stopping to read it all. So yea, we must part.
But I am excited for you. Why? Because I don’t care how deeply steeped in pain, misery or even “simple” staleness (which is akin to a slow death) you are, I am certain that today I have passed something to you. I don’t care how much. It may be just one little idea. Ideas are powerful.
You are powerful. You have all the power you need. And all the support you need. You just have to look. I am not christian, but it is true that He who seeks shall find.
You may fail 100 times. That means that you’ve done it wrong 100 times, and you know 100 more ways that don’t work. When you fall, fall forward. Get up, and try again, differently.
Yet, you don’t need to put yourself through all of that. You don’t need to stumble around for years.
Remember, you don’t fail because you are not trying hard enough; you fail because you try to do it wrong, and you need to try smarter.
So look for people who can help you. Look for resources,
Work on yourself.
Work on your bodily health, on your mental health, on your emotional health.
Want to have a list of the things I have done since I started this path three months ago?
– I took up meditation; I mean to keep doing it for life.
– I took up strength training; I mean to keep doing it for life.
– I started to improve my diet, increasingly and bit by bit; I don’t mean to ever stop.
– I learned German, studying two hours a day, before starting university.
– I worked on increasing my self-awareness, my control on my thought, emotions, beliefs, reactions.
– I started planning my year, my months, my weeks and my days in a careful and purposeful way.
– I spent 2 hours a day by working on active recovery through the Recovery Nation Recovery Workshop and NoFap Academy GetClean! reboot program.
– I worked with a Gestalt psychotherapist one hour a week.
– I worked on improving my posture.
– I started using my ergonomic chair more and more over my normal one, and then worked up to working and studying while standing up.
– I set specific goals for every aspect of my life, planned with discernment and then acted on them.
My life has improved to an extent that I simply could not even expect. From a skinny fat wimp who had never done any physical activity in his life, I can now do 5×5 pull-ups, and I my bodily appearance simply exploded.
I desire women. I have no trouble at all with blocking off any kind of suggestive imagery I may come across while on the internet.
I am much more focused and quick-minded. My creativity has improved, and I ma writing more than I have ever done.
Really, you name it, and I have improved on it.
Now of course, it’s not like this all thanks for quitting PMO.
Did I quit PMO thanks to doing all of this and experiencing all of these benefits, or did I do all of this thanks to quitting PMO?
It’s both.
Because, you see, it’s not about what you do. It’s about what you want, it’s about who you think you are, and who you want to be.
You are not an addict. You are a human being who doesn’t yet know how to healthily manage his life.
I chose to live the best life that I could live. And in that life, addiction had no place. Addiction has no place.
And in fact, addiction no longer is a part of my life, and I know it will never be.
Why do I know this? Because I changed. You can’t quit any addiction without growing as a person.
Let’s be clear here. All of that is just a fraction of what I have done and accomplished. And it’s not just about what I have done. I am still doing much of that. Because this is not about doing x in order to get y.
I grew out of addiction because I understood its source, that is, denial of reality and rejection of pain, and I worked on myself, from all areas, from all angles.
If I were to break it down, these are my goals, described in a very general way for sake of simplicity, which are the same I started with, and the ones I mean to work on til the day I die :
– Achieving mastery over myself. This entails mastering my mind and my body, as a cohesive and whole unit.
– Achieving financial prosperity.
– Becoming a full-time writer, fully expressing my being through living for what I most love doing.
You can see how each of those branches out to cover the whole spectrum of human existence at its core.
I didn’t care about how long it would take. I don’t care about the how, because I have an indestructible why.
I have quit addiction.
And, to be truly honest, it’s been easy.
Because what I focused on was not on removing something that I didn’t like, but on creating something better with what I had, my mind, my body, my life.
Truth be told, when I started this, quitting PMO was something that I simply took for granted, and I tacked it onto the end of the Vision I created and wrote for my life.
Because my clarity was that strong. There was no doubt I was going to quit PMO. It was just one of the first, little steps I needed to take in order to create from the ground up the life that I wanted.
My goals are not short-term. They are not even long-term.
They are life-term. I look at my life, and I see a line with a beginning and an end. I mean to map the most out of this, and it is from this perspective that I act, that I look at y thoughts, my emotions, my experiences, my desires, my goals, my plans, my actions. This is how I act, this is how I live.
And it’s how I quit PMO.
I am not saying you should do everything I have written, or even anything of that.
Look, three months are a lot, if you are living your days with purpose. You’d be amazed at how much a human being is capable of accomplishing in a single week.
Three words : Commitment, Constistency, Method.
You need to know what you truly want, commit to getting it and renew that commitment every day.
You have to be absolutely, 100% in the enactment of the actions you need to take in order to further your goals.
You must find out for yourself what works best for you, and then act on that basis.
Mountains are not climbed in a single bound. Step by step, there is nothing a human being can’t accomplish.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But you have to keep putting one foot after the other! He who stops is lost.
You see, I understand that there may well be quite a dissonance between what I’m telling you and what you think about addiction. You may tend to think that addiction is this enormous monster which is destroying your life.
And here I come and tell you that it’s all in your head and that it’s your choice whether to change your life or not.
But that’s how it is, on all levels.
The thing is, over time, through your free actions, you have built a network of addictive neural pathways which now cause you to intensely crave PMO.
Just as well you can, over time and through your free choice, create new pathways which support the life you truly want to live.
It’s up to you.
What is that you truly want? As long as you can’t answer this, you will never have anything to say in the face of your urges with full conviction, and as a consequence you will give in.
Who are you? Who do you want to be? What do you want to be?
Once you know that, ask yourself : what can I do in order to get what I desire?
And if you don’t know, look for answers. We live in the information age, and the vast majority of those who are reading this are first worlders. Use the infinite opportunities that you have at your disposal.
Once you know what you want, you know how to get there, and you’ve created a specific, detailed plan for how to get there (and if you don’t know how to do that, look up “how to crew plans”; seriously, what’s stopping you from this if not your own ego? You can’t do something? Learn how to do it! Train! Listen! Read! Seek! And once you find what you need, get to work), you have all you need.
Now it’s just a matter of doing the thing. Regardless of how you feel about it.
The difference between those who succeed and those who fail is that the former keep doing what they know they have to do (because they’ve planned it) regardless of whether they feel like doing it or not.
In order to grow and become a mature human being, a mature man, you MUST go through pain. The pain of growth.
But to do this you need to want to grow. If you are still stuck in an immature Peter Pan mode, like the vast majority of men today, thinking that “growth is bad”, then of course you won’t want to grow. Trying to do something you don’t want to do is asking for failure.
As I said, what do you want? There are no limits. You may think you prefer addiction over health. Fine. It’s your choice. The only thing is, you have to accept all of the consequences of your choices. The good ones, and the bad ones. Otherwise, again, denial of reality.
Stop looking for excuses, because that’s exactly what’s stopping you from succeeding.
Do not take this just as an “inspirational” thing. I am trying to help you. I can’t do that if all you’ll seek to get from my words is emotional stimulation. I want you to get results, not to soothe yourself throughout “powerful words”. That’s not my aim, and I hope you will be wise enough not to do that, and instead to think on my words and seek your own answers.
We all have our own unique path. I told you a little about my story, a little about the way I see things and the way I went about “quitting PMO”. This is it
Know yourself. Know what you want. Then go and get it.
You will find that addiction is but a wimpy thing compared to the strength you gain from moving from a place of deep internal clarity.
This doesn’t mean that you should not curb out the behavior. You have to, indeed.
Internet filtering system, accountability softwares, I don’t have to feel you about this. Seek what you need.
But that’s just addressing the superficial system. You need to pull this thing out by the roots, and in order to do that you will need to get down and dirty with your own “mud”.
You are a human being, not an “addict”, not a worm crawling in the mud. A Human Being, standing tall.
You have in you the strength to succeed in this. You just need to unearth it.
Why would you want to press on regardless of the pain?
Because you were born into this world to live in freedom, not in bondage.
Only you can choose to claim your life.
It’s up to you.
The only one stopping yourself from succeeding is you.
A man is not defeated until he gives up. Be strong, and use your head.
I can’t say what you will need to do in order to succeed. What I know is that as much as no path is 100% secure, doing nothing is a 100% guarantee of failure.
Do you want it? Then find a way. Make it work, for you.
Use the help others can give you, but know that this is about you.
I don’t believe in luck.
Create your own luck. Take control of your life. I have done it, and so can you.
I wish you a good journey.
by Giuliano
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