Hey there. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on these forums, but I’m approaching a year without porn soon, and I thought I’d post about my progress. Maybe some of you remember me.
Sometime in the middle of March last year, I took a small, blue hard drive out of my closet and looked at it for a few minutes. It contained all the porn I had been downloading and backing up since about 2010. This hard drive contained some of my absolute favorite porn videos. As I looked at it, I thought about how it used to be a place I could escape to. At one point, it really served a valid purpose in my life. It was somewhat of a shelter from the difficulties I faced at home. It was a fantasy realm, a place where I could respond to the sexual urges in my brain. However, as I held it in my hand and thought about it that night, I realized it wasn’t doing that for me anymore. This hard drive was no longer an escape for me. It was really more like a prison. I watched porn off of it almost every night (often adding more onto it as the novelty wore off), and I felt like I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.
Something changed inside of me that night. I don’t know what it was. Maybe I was just sick of feeling like my life was out of control. Maybe I started to think a lot about the future and what kind of person I really wanted to be a year from then. Maybe I was just sick and tired of feeling so ashamed with myself for watching porn. So, I plugged the hard drive into my computer and I completely wiped it clean. The contents cannot be recovered. I said “bye-bye” to about eight years of collecting and watching porn.
Then, I joined this forum and made a commitment to myself to quit watching porn forever. I didn’t ever want to go back to it, and I still don’t.
A lot of people will write about their experiences with quitting, claiming that they found new “superpowers” after 90 days. I’ve been clean for almost 365 days, and I haven’t found any superpowers. However, I found something much more valuable than that: some newfound piece of mind. I was an addict for a large percentage of my life. I started watching porn when I was 14 or 15, and my fascination with it blew up into an addiction when I was 16. I’m 26 years old now. That’s almost half of my life I spent addicted to porn. Every day I spent addicted was a day I felt ashamed of myself, a day I felt disgusted with myself, and a day I felt guilty for doing what I was doing every night. I watched porn during the romantic relationships in my life, which compounded the feelings of guilt and shame. Now, a lot of that guilt, shame, and self-disgust is gone. I am more proud of who I am today than I am of who I was a year ago, and I think having that confidence in myself is much more valuable than any superpower.
However, I also want to point out that, in a way, I’m really just getting started. I was in the depths of my addiction for about 9 years, and I’ve been clean for only one. In some ways, I’m still a newbie to being porn-free. I don’t want to discourage anyone, but I need to tell you the truth: I still get urges to watch porn. I’m still an addict. Porn still presents itself as an alluring escape in my mind when I go through hard times. It offers itself as a guaranteed method to make me feel better instantly, and I have to fight against it. In those times, I just have to tell myself that I’m done with “feeling better”. I don’t want to “feel good”, I want to live. I want to take whatever life dishes out for me, whether it’s pleasurable or painful, and I want to experience it. I don’t want to medicate my feelings with porn, and I still have to think about that regularly.
I’m not saying this to scare anybody away from recovery. Recovery is hard work, and it takes a long time. I don’t know exactly how long it takes. I guess it’s different for everybody. However, for me, I know it’s going to take longer than a year before I feel like my addiction has really gone into remission. I was acting out on my addiction for 9 years. Maybe it’ll be 9 years of sobriety before I really know what it’s like to be completely free from porn.
So yes, it’s hard work, my friends. However, e mafai ona e faia. You can recover from porn addiction. You mafai recover and it’s worth the battle. You can take matters into your own hands and you can become a better version of yourself.
Finally, I want to say that I’m grateful for this community. Many of you have offered me insight and perspective along my recovery journey thus far, and I don’t want that to go unacknowledged. As a way to give back to the community, feel free to ask me anything about recovery. I’m happy to help, and I want you to succeed!
LINK - 352 Days Without Porn – AMA
by Ridley
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