[NSFW] Any recovering porn addicts willing to share inspirational stories?
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I've pretty much hit rock bottom and come to the conclusion that I can't stay on my current trajectory. It's already cost me one, if not two, relationships, and I'm tired of dating on hard mode. I'm worried I might be too far gone, so it would be immensely helpful to hear from someone who's been in the same place and managed to turn things around.
I can manage a week or two with the power of self loathing but once the urges come back I'm really, and I mean really good at coming up with excuses.
I don't have this relationship with porn but have been addicted to other things. I have found some success in this method:
I tell myself "ok, I can do bad habit in three hours, and I promise myself I won't feel bad if I do." and then in three hours, if I can, I just tell myself the same thing over again, and put it off for three more hours. If I buckle, I don't kick the shit out of myself, and I've found that I can make it a whole day if I bargain with myself based on time. If I'm going to do bad habit in three hours, I can think about other things until the three hours is up. And no matter what, setting a small goal (just three measly hours, what's that to me if I can do bad habit as much as I want when it's done?) and accomplishing it gives me a different form of reward.
Idk, it doesn't always work, but when I was trying to fast for health/personal care it really helped me not eat until my "shift" was up.
It doesn't have to be three hours, it could be 30 minutes, or "when I'm done doing other activity" or something similar. Small goals that are possible to attain.
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I've pretty much hit rock bottom and come to the conclusion that I can't stay on my current trajectory. It's already cost me one, if not two, relationships, and I'm tired of dating on hard mode. I'm worried I might be too far gone, so it would be immensely helpful to hear from someone who's been in the same place and managed to turn things around.
I can manage a week or two with the power of self loathing but once the urges come back I'm really, and I mean really good at coming up with excuses.
As people have said you need to change from a negative reason of self-loathing to the positives. Performing better in bed, sleeping better, just generally being less depressed, removing unrealistic expectations in bed, not contributing to exploitation are just some of the benefits.
Just set it as a challenge to yourself to go a month without (how nnn started) and set your own punishment and reward (not porn or sex related) for success or failure. On success (or failure), try again.
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I've pretty much hit rock bottom and come to the conclusion that I can't stay on my current trajectory. It's already cost me one, if not two, relationships, and I'm tired of dating on hard mode. I'm worried I might be too far gone, so it would be immensely helpful to hear from someone who's been in the same place and managed to turn things around.
I can manage a week or two with the power of self loathing but once the urges come back I'm really, and I mean really good at coming up with excuses.
How much are you jerking it? How has it affected your relationships? Are you jerking it to the point you’re not having sex with your gf? Is it interfering with other activities or responsibilities? Were you happy in those relationships to begin with?
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I've pretty much hit rock bottom and come to the conclusion that I can't stay on my current trajectory. It's already cost me one, if not two, relationships, and I'm tired of dating on hard mode. I'm worried I might be too far gone, so it would be immensely helpful to hear from someone who's been in the same place and managed to turn things around.
I can manage a week or two with the power of self loathing but once the urges come back I'm really, and I mean really good at coming up with excuses.
I don't understand this anti-porn propaganda. Sounds like those relationships of yours just had jealousy issues. What we do with our own bodies is our business. Find you a partner who respects your bodily needs.
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My other half had a very good experience with TalkSpace, which accepts our insurance.
Unless you're in the Republican medicaid-obamacare gap, you should have insurance and they should have at least some mental health coverage. And if you are or they don't, a professional stranger via an online service is definitely something you should look into.
My insurance (US) doesn't have any mental health coverage and I am not under Medicaid/Medicare/Obamacare. Seems to be common enough. I have an HSA bank account, but it gets rapidly depleted from something like that.
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I don't understand this anti-porn propaganda. Sounds like those relationships of yours just had jealousy issues. What we do with our own bodies is our business. Find you a partner who respects your bodily needs.
Please read my other replies. This has absolutely nothing to do with jealousity or anti-porn attitudes.
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How much are you jerking it? How has it affected your relationships? Are you jerking it to the point you’re not having sex with your gf? Is it interfering with other activities or responsibilities? Were you happy in those relationships to begin with?
Sometimes 8 - 12 hours a day, multiple days in a row. I have no interest in sex at all and yes, that obviously affects my relationships as well as other duties.
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I don't have this relationship with porn but have been addicted to other things. I have found some success in this method:
I tell myself "ok, I can do bad habit in three hours, and I promise myself I won't feel bad if I do." and then in three hours, if I can, I just tell myself the same thing over again, and put it off for three more hours. If I buckle, I don't kick the shit out of myself, and I've found that I can make it a whole day if I bargain with myself based on time. If I'm going to do bad habit in three hours, I can think about other things until the three hours is up. And no matter what, setting a small goal (just three measly hours, what's that to me if I can do bad habit as much as I want when it's done?) and accomplishing it gives me a different form of reward.
Idk, it doesn't always work, but when I was trying to fast for health/personal care it really helped me not eat until my "shift" was up.
It doesn't have to be three hours, it could be 30 minutes, or "when I'm done doing other activity" or something similar. Small goals that are possible to attain.
Interesting approach. I hadn't considered this one before. Thanks!
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My other half had a very good experience with TalkSpace, which accepts our insurance.
Unless you're in the Republican medicaid-obamacare gap, you should have insurance and they should have at least some mental health coverage. And if you are or they don't, a professional stranger via an online service is definitely something you should look into.
I'm not from the US. My health insurance doesn't cover therapy and the one covered by our "free" healthcare is excremely difficult to get into.
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I've pretty much hit rock bottom and come to the conclusion that I can't stay on my current trajectory. It's already cost me one, if not two, relationships, and I'm tired of dating on hard mode. I'm worried I might be too far gone, so it would be immensely helpful to hear from someone who's been in the same place and managed to turn things around.
I can manage a week or two with the power of self loathing but once the urges come back I'm really, and I mean really good at coming up with excuses.
I used to be addicted but have managed to quit porn entirely. This isn’t something that can be taught though. You can’t solve an addiction when it’s only a piece of a puzzle where the other pieces keep bringing it back.
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Being conscious of your reasons and motivations can make it a postive step
That's kind of the point why I made this thread. At this point the upsides are mostly hypothetical. I have good reason to believe there are positive changes down the road but I lack the evidence and that competes with a fatalistic view that I was "born this way" or that I've permanently damaged myself through decades of increasingly excessive porn use. I get that too much is too much, and there's obviously no downside to cutting back other than how difficult it is, but when the tough times hit it would be reassuring to know there's light at the end of the tunnel.
You're struggling with moderating dopamine seeking activities. Porn is the specific one, but carelessness can easily lead to others being the target.
Any activity you can't regulate will have a deleterious effect on your life. So my question is what do you want to do with that time and effort?
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The porn-seeking is your maladaptive mood-regulator.
So if you want to change your behaviors or the way you feel about them, you need to change the way you think and feel inside.
Which means stop focusing on the behavior, and start focusing on the underlying feelings which provoke the behavior. I do strongly suggest therapy, because it's an emotional thing that's happening which leads to your useage.
Yeah, depression and loneliness are two classic culprits. Even if OP went cold turkey and kept it up, without dealing with the root cause they're prone to abusing something else instead like video games, religion addiction, exercise addiction, or maybe even substances. And I know some people will say religion and exercise aren't that bad to get addicted to, but much like porn and video games, the dose can make the poison. This is lemmy so I assume people understand how harmful people can be when they're too into their religion. I have a relative who has to go to the gym to avoid panic attacks, and physical overexertion can lead to serious injury.
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My favorite work on the subject: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/02/hes_just_not_that_into_anyone.html
That's a really good article
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Probably so. As with anything, the dose makes the poison.
It’s not that I don’t have other interests or things to do. I think porn (and weed) are ways to escape uncomfortable feelings in my life rather than dealing with them. It also kind of numbs me or makes me lethargic/passive, since I go for the quick and easy reward for low effort rather than the other way around. I don’t even get the same enjoyment from it as I used to, so I just keep upping the dose hoping for the same reward, but I don’t get it - yet I keep doing it.
I think it may be easier to do if you mentally frame it as something you're putting away until you're in a place to be responsible with it. When you feel you may be ready for it again imagine what responsible use would look like, maybe only when you want sex but its infeasable (partner or you are tired, date went poorly, etc).
You may want to do similarly with weed.
Giving up something you like permanently sucks, its why so often people keep drinking until they absolutely have to quit, when if a few years earlier they'd taken a few months off and set some rules for themselves before starting again they may be able to keep doing it.
Also as you're learning to deal with boredom and emotions look up some dbt or cbt resources they help control your emotions by being aware of them and by learning distress tolerance
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What I believe excessive porn use has done to me is that sex has become uninteresting even when it’s available, and I also have physical problems performing when I “force” myself to it. These bad experiences then further reinforce my negative associations with sex, which in turn makes me even less interested in trying the next time. I don’t feel that “mundane arousal” throughout the day - I don’t even know what it means to be horny without physical stimulation. I’ve always felt this way, but it has gotten worse over time (I’m in my mid-thirties now). I can’t know for sure whether it’s all due to porn or if porn just makes it worse, since my porn use preceded my first sexual experiences with another person. If it’s something I was born with, then there’s simply no fixing it even if I cut out porn entirely, but since I can’t know that, I don’t see any other way forward than to try and change the things I can change and see if there’s any improvement.
And I just want to highlight that when I say excessive porn use, I really mean it. I can literally waste 8 to 12 hours on it and then do the same again the next day. Even if I watched porn for an hour every single day it would still be a massive improvement (but I’m intending to do better than that).
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yeah I think I can relate (late 30s). Once in a while everyone wakes up in the shower questioning wtf they are doing, right? Since you are free to do whatever but that doesn’t make you happy do you have an answers as to why that is? I had a similar but different situation and if I break it down for me it is: no interest in improving who I am because I can just keep going on games, weed and porn. At some point I realized how much time i waste with games, and that broke like a core thing that I used to enjoy. And with porn it is similar. I can see that masturbating 1-2h before starting the day adds up to a lot. Getting out of that took time and if you’ve come to this point I think you are on a good way if you keep working on it.
For me part of the solution that I was holding back because I thought my partner wouldn’t be comfortable if I’d be more open about what I’d be willing to try. And that’s fine. But made me miserable for years. Like ‘I don’t hear music in my head anymore’, which is fixed now but was broken for a shockingly long time.What made the change? I saw an ad for ‘locktober’, and thought ‘for someone not into chastity you sure have an awful lot of uncomfortable cheap cages. Yet you never considered this challenge’. Can I allow myself to do something considered humiliating and dumb, but for ‘fun’? I guess probably maybe. I started to say yes to more things that are good but uncomfortable for me. Like going to the gym. I almost died on the treadmill but very good level of hurt 5/5
. I try to use less social media and dgaf about news because I’m not being paid to keep up with all this bullshit. I mostly play chess on my phone these days to kill time. I have one active hobby that’s fuelling my adhd right now(pottery). I fail often and I don’t know for how long I can keep this up.And now that I’ve written this up I see that it’s a couple of small changes and not just me thinking ‘I can do locktober easy, I’ll start tomorrow’.
I wish you all the best and that you can figure out something drives you. Seeing a therapist certainly accelerated my process and I would recommend it if you’ve never tried it. Just saying
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Yeah I think I can relate (late 30s). Once in a while everyone wakes up in the shower questioning wtf they are doing, right? Since you are free to do whatever but that doesn’t make you happy do you have an answers as to why that is? I had a similar but different situation and if I break it down for me it is: no interest in improving who I am because I can just keep going on games, weed and porn. At some point I realized how much time i waste with games, and that broke like a core thing that I used to enjoy. And with porn it is similar. I can see that masturbating 1-2h before starting the day adds up to a lot. Getting out of that took time and if you’ve come to this point I think you are on a good way if you keep working on it.
For me part of the solution that I was holding back because I thought my partner wouldn’t be comfortable if I’d be more open about what I’d be willing to try. And that’s fine. But made me miserable for years. Like ‘I don’t hear music in my head anymore’, which is fixed now but was broken for a shockingly long time.What made the change? I saw an ad for ‘locktober’, and thought ‘for someone not into chastity you sure have an awful lot of uncomfortable cheap cages. Yet you never considered this challenge’. Can I allow myself to do something considered humiliating and dumb, but for ‘fun’? I guess probably maybe. I started to say yes to more things that are good but uncomfortable for me. Like going to the gym. I almost died on the treadmill but very good level of hurt 5/5
. I try to use less social media and dgaf about news because I’m not being paid to keep up with all this bullshit. I mostly play chess on my phone these days to kill time. I have one active hobby that’s fuelling my adhd right now(pottery). I fail often and I don’t know for how long I can keep this up.And now that I’ve written this up I see that it’s a couple of small changes and not just me thinking ‘I can do locktober easy, I’ll start tomorrow’.
I wish you all the best and that you can figure out something drives you. Seeing a therapist certainly accelerated my process and I would recommend it if you’ve never tried it. Just saying
Did you actually go for locktober in the literal sense of the term or is that just what sparked the idea?
I often thought that if my partner had been more into femdom we could've easily turned this challenge into play. Like I said, I'm really good at coming up with excuses for myself when things are up to me but I'm equally good at keeping my promises to other people. I would've gladly handed the key in both figurative and literal sense to someone else and have them decide for me. It's too late now unfortunelately but I'm not sure if it would've worked on the long run either way. While the source of the issue with our sex life was undoubtly me there's no denying that an overall sexual incompatibility played a role as well. It's not easy to be a dominant looking guy who aint one. I can only hope I have better luck with the next one.
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Did you actually go for locktober in the literal sense of the term or is that just what sparked the idea?
I often thought that if my partner had been more into femdom we could've easily turned this challenge into play. Like I said, I'm really good at coming up with excuses for myself when things are up to me but I'm equally good at keeping my promises to other people. I would've gladly handed the key in both figurative and literal sense to someone else and have them decide for me. It's too late now unfortunelately but I'm not sure if it would've worked on the long run either way. While the source of the issue with our sex life was undoubtly me there's no denying that an overall sexual incompatibility played a role as well. It's not easy to be a dominant looking guy who aint one. I can only hope I have better luck with the next one.
I guess I’m training for it. But yeah seeing a listing on fetlife and playing it through my head and then telling my partner that I’ll fuck around and find out. Learning how to communicate and talk about thoughts/needs/wants takes time and is not something that people casually talk about.
Which is why so many people are forever unhappy. I think there’s a small redemption bonus in relationships for at least trying to make an effort to not make the situation actively worse
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I've pretty much hit rock bottom and come to the conclusion that I can't stay on my current trajectory. It's already cost me one, if not two, relationships, and I'm tired of dating on hard mode. I'm worried I might be too far gone, so it would be immensely helpful to hear from someone who's been in the same place and managed to turn things around.
I can manage a week or two with the power of self loathing but once the urges come back I'm really, and I mean really good at coming up with excuses.
Yeah, I quit and relapsed and that brings us to present day. I can only really get off to femdom porn but the vast majority of femdom porn is gross and terrible. I love dominant women but I fucking hate the porn. I guess it wasn't all for nothing, I'm not as bad as I was. I'm not a no-fap idiot either. Masturbation is great! I think porn is fine as long as you don't fucking hate what you're watching, you practice self control, and It isn't replacing genuine human connection. Sadly, not an option for me, at least right now.
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I've pretty much hit rock bottom and come to the conclusion that I can't stay on my current trajectory. It's already cost me one, if not two, relationships, and I'm tired of dating on hard mode. I'm worried I might be too far gone, so it would be immensely helpful to hear from someone who's been in the same place and managed to turn things around.
I can manage a week or two with the power of self loathing but once the urges come back I'm really, and I mean really good at coming up with excuses.
Many people don't understand that porn is a super stimuli and our brains can be rewired to prefer it over normal sex. They will also argue it is propaganda to suggest such a thing - primarily because of the stigma around sex in a puritan society like ours.
I'm no saint here and don't have an easy button for you. All I can suggest is go as long as you can without porn, then masturbate to your imagination. The longest streak I've managed to avoid porn did this. It may not work for you, but its worth a try.
I realized I had similar issues you mentioned and found online communities that don't discriminate like rebootnation. Another good reminder that this can happen to anyone is the YouTube series by Terry fucking Crews: dirty little secret. If he had a problem with porn, anyone can.
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Yeah, I quit and relapsed and that brings us to present day. I can only really get off to femdom porn but the vast majority of femdom porn is gross and terrible. I love dominant women but I fucking hate the porn. I guess it wasn't all for nothing, I'm not as bad as I was. I'm not a no-fap idiot either. Masturbation is great! I think porn is fine as long as you don't fucking hate what you're watching, you practice self control, and It isn't replacing genuine human connection. Sadly, not an option for me, at least right now.
Yeah, I have nothing against masturbation, it's the porn that's the issue for me. I have no desire for sex and I struggle to find normal women attractive. Sex is such an essential part of romantic relationships that I have to work this out if I ever want to succeed in one. I'm not sure I can moderate it. I just have to try and quit it entirely and hopefully there comes a day that I don't even miss it.
