I’m 26 years old and I have suffered from depression since as long as I can remember. I don’t know how much of my depression is genetic and how much is psychological. I think my depression might be due to my parents’ broken marriage and also because my father himself suffered from depression all his life and genetics might be at play here. He resorted to alcohol and died due to health problems when I was 15. Since I’d joined high school in 2008 up to 2014 I’ve had a lot of ups and downs. My self esteem was low. I had severe social anxiety. I couldn’t even muster up the courage to go to a super market which is less than 200m from my residence.
I resorted to alcohol and was hospitalized due to over-consumption. Later I started doing drugs which escalated my mental health issues to an extent where I was hospitalized for 12 days because of severe weakness and stomach pain. Turned out, it was nothing. The doctors had nothing to say except they suggested me to do yoga and not overthink. Things turned out quite horrible in the beginning of 2016 when I had a nervous breakdown. It all started with an episode of binge drinking. According to all my psychiatrist, the binge drinking incident triggered my nervous breakdown. I was bed ridden for one month. For more than three months I couldn’t walk straight, couldn’t remember things for more than few seconds, couldn’t talk properly, I was easily overwhelmed by fast speech.
Since my college days, I’ve always gone through life thinking of myself as a victim. I’ve felt that all the bad things have happened only to me. I’ve been over eating since as long as I can remember. I used to masturbate to pornography more than 3 to 4 times a day. It was like an escape to me. As is the case with most of them, my fantasies escalated to more disgusting genre of porno. I started watching sadist videos. I was glued to my screen searching for violent videos. Women beaten, abused, humiliated, and gang-bang abuse, etc, etc. Things escalated to unimaginable extent.
I had completely lost myself to this vicious circle of self loathing, victimized attitude. I’d long realized that masturbation and porn addiction is a big problem for me. I’d tried to curb my habit of masturbation & porn countless number of times. I later stumbled upon nofap subreddit. I tried it a few times. Relapsed, tried again, relapsed, tried again, relapsed, and so on…
November 15, 2016, after yet another relapse, I started with new nofap streak. I don’t know what it was but I somehow knew this time it was quite different. I was stronger, more motivated, more inspired than ever to get through this. Maybe the past failures taught me enough. The initial period was not so difficult. Things started falling apart for me after 2 to 3 weeks.
Meanwhile, I started educating myself on addiction and other mental illnesses that I think I suffer from. I started working out. I stopped being alone; I was always with my friends or busy doing something far away from home. I don’t know what exactly happened, where did I get the strength from but things started becoming better. During that period, I read like crazy, I exercised for more than 2 hours a day, I drank a lot of coffee, I met a lot of friends, I cut off from everyone, literally everyone, except a few good friends. I didn’t even have sexual thoughts 99% of the time.
Today, I’ve completed 100th day of my nofap challenge. To be honest, I didn’t have any plan to come here on my 100th day and write a long post. I don’t know how, I just happened to be browsing nofap today. I updated my badge when I realized that today I’ve completed 100th day of my nofap challenge.
Coming to the point, my depression is literally gone. I don’t know what happened but it’s just gone. I’ve been dealing with this since a long long time, more than 8 years to be precise and I’ve never come even close. I had never thought that I’d ever get to see a day when I’d be so liberated. The last sentence brought tears. I literally never imagined that I’d ever feel this good about myself.
My anxiety has gone drastically low. I can walk into a huge crowd and I’m not scared of being judged. I love myself. This does mean that I can deliver a speech in from of a huge crowd. That’s still to happen but my social anxiety has gone down drastically.
I’m thousand times more comfortable to talk to women now. There’s this calmness in me that I’ve never felt before. All my relationships have improved. I’ve not shared the knowledge of my nofap challenge with any of my friends. All of them are surprised to see a sudden transformation in me.
I apologize for the bad and out of order writing. My current state is a mixture of hysteria and anxiety and I’m unable to properly put my thoughts into words. My life has turned upside down in the last 3 months. I have no idea where did I get the strength to pull through, but I’m glad I did it.
I’d like to thank every redditor for the motivation they’ve given me. I’ve failed countless times and this hasn’t been easy. I’m really grateful to all you redditors for your contribution to this thread. To all the redditors who’re still struggling with PMO, I’d like to say that I’ve failed countless times and everytime you fail you become stronger. Keep pushing yourself and I am sure you will pull through.
Thank you once again, fellow redditor.
LINK – 100 days ot nofap.
by mrMaggi
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