On Sunday I will have gone 60 days without porn, and 18 days without masturbating and I haven’t felt this good in a long time. I just wanted to tell my story about quitting porn, what it has done to me and how far I’ve come now.
I am not sure when it started, but maybe I was ten or eleven when I started to masturbate? Porn wasn’t far away, and a friend I had then showed me my first porno movie. I wasn’t sure what to expect, I only knew that masturbating was exciting. Then later we got channels at home and I started to watch porn at night. After a while I also started to masturbate to it. It was nice and I liked it. I am not sure why I started. I only know that I was kinda lonely as a child and I also had social anxiety. I am pretty sure that got worse after starting to watch porn.
After I started watching porn I was pretty much masturbating everywhere I could. When I was 15 I found that porn was easily accessible by the internet and a whole new world opened up to me. At that time, you could only access small clips at 15 sec or longer. I used to make my own playlist of the best ones, and always getting the best one to end the whole thing with. It got compulsive real fast.
I continued with it all through my youth and my twenties, never trying to stop. It just got a part of my daily life. All through my life I have been experiencing anxiety and depression, and I am pretty sure that most of it was happening after I started watching porn and during. I mean I had some anxieties before that but they were never as crippling as they got after a while. I was also living in denial and thinking porn didn’t have anything to do with. I didn’t even think I had a problem. It was natural, it was something all boys did.
During my twenties I continued, and the compulsions got worse. I started to plan when I was gonna masturbate to porn next and was really looking forward to it. Every time, mostly that is, I came down hard after that and didn’t really feel all that well. I was always overdoing it and taking longer than I needed, because I just had to get that perfect video to end it with. This continued all through my twenties.
But when I reached 30 years old I started noticing my depression coming back. January 2013 I crashed hard, and my depression was crippling me in all modes of life; Socially, studying, my health etc. I also stopped getting hard. It was not fun at all. It almost went as far as me going suicidal. But when I noticed I was going in that direction I went to a psychiatrist. All throughout that year and before it I tried finding quick fixes, like stuff being wrong with me physically, because I couldn’t bear it being mentally. When I went to the psychiatrist, it got better and all through that year I worked hard, but not really letting past be past. I didn’t once take responsibility for my problems or the porn addiction that was taking over my life.
During 2014 I was working on starting a feminist party with a lot of people and I started to really get engaged in the work we were doing. I have always been an advocate of these things, I just never realized. My values had always been good and very rock solid, and they got even more strengthened from joining this party.
I still continued with porn, I didn’t think it was a big deal. I was in denial. I didn’t have an addiction. I did however always say I could stop if I wanted to. And from 2015-2016 and onwards I was always trying to quit. Never quite reaching beyond 1 month. Then I relapsed, and one video wouldn’t hurt. I then said that one more and more couldn’t hurt and I was back to it.
This continued on till the summer of 2017. Here I had decided I was finally going to quit. This summer has also been my worse experience with anxiety. Flaring up over every little thing. I had never experienced this kind of anxiety. It was taking over my mind and my life. Making me isolate myself more and more, thinking I liked it like this. Only seeing a few friends and thinking that was enough. Quickly I found out that I was wrong.
But back to the porn. I became member of a site and I downloaded all the videos I wanted. I was gonna end my porn addiction by watching as many as I could, still even if I didn’t want to. I thought that was the best solution. But it didn’t work. It just made me worse.
Then in September I crashed for the second time in my life. Crashed hard. At the same time, I hadn’t watched porn in a while. But I tried it once more, but that just made it worse again. During the end of August something started to happen to me, I started getting intrusive images and thoughts. They were about women in porn situations, walking past them on the street, but I also saw kids. This really really freaked me out and I became convinced I was the worst person in the world.
I started to talk to my parents about this and they had to calm me down every time explaining these was just thoughts and not reality. I knew that in the back of my mind, but they were so intrusive and came at the most inopportune time, that it was hard to handle. So, I started to fight back at them and then it only became worse.
During this time, I found yourbrainonporn, and watching Gary Wilson lecture about porn addiction opened up my mind. I started to read about rebooting, the benefits and what I could expect. It opened me up to a new world. A world where I could finally get rid of this crap. I have now been reading a lot about it, and I am ready to really do this.
Now soon two months later I have been free from porn, and around 16 days free of masturbation. The two last weeks have steadily become better. The intrusive thoughts are still there, but they are more manageable, and I have become better at just letting them pass. Still they come in fragments all through the day. I still also see pictures and get intrusive thoughts when I am walking out side, but I don’t panic much anymore. I have also been experiencing panic attacks for at least a month, since the end of September, but they are gone.
I have become a lot better at calming down just before I feel they start, and then they stop before they develop. I still semi-freak out by my thoughts and porn induced pictures, but I overall feel much better. My head is clearer, I am more social, I talk a lot more with people around me. I feel really happy at time, but my mood is more stabilized than it has ever been.
I have always tried to find out what was wrong with me. Because I have been thinking that for a long time. Trying to better myself, finding myself, all so I didn’t have to be the person I was. Compulsive need to better myself. Now I have found that I just need to be myself, and that is the best me I can be. I am happy with that. I have started reading more, doing yoga a couple of times a week, started excersising more, need to start eating more healthy, writing down positive memories instead of negative ones, not focusing to much on those. Generally trying to be the best one I can be. And it’s working.
The pangs of anxiety, moods swings, crying a lot of the time, panic attacks and generally feeling like a fucking horrendous person have been taking a toll. This have made the two months a living hell, but the decision to quit porn has been firm. I haven’t relapsed, and I know that I don’t need porn, and that if I start again I will feel like crap. It’s just not worth it anymore.
I want to live my life to the fullest and experience all the things I didn’t want to when using porn. I have slowly but surely started to put things behind me. I am going to see a psychiatrist now in a weeks time. I feel like my life is finally starting to get together. I am 35 now and I started porn when I was probably 12, so I probably have been doing it for 23 years. That’s a long time, but finally it’s behind me.
My anxiety isn’t gone, but it’s not as crippling as it used to be. i still haven pangs of anxiety now and then, but now it’s just stemming from my porn addiction, I don’t see it much in my regular life anymore. There is still some work ahead, but I feel quite ready now.
LINK – Almost 60 days free of porn
BY – weddingnails
UPDATE – Reached 90 days for the first time in my life – my second story
When I came to the forum I wrote this post: https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/almost-60-days-free-of-porn-my-story.138291/
When I had reached 60 days I wasn’t all that happy or on the right track as I wanted to be. Now? Well, I am in much better shape psychically and mentally. Found out a lot things and genuinely more happy than before. But we will take this step by step.
The Beginning
As I said in my 60 days thread I started watching porn systematically by the age of 15. When I started it was to block out all my pain and forget about my social anxiety. It was to hide from the world, a world I thought didn’t accept me. I was a frail, afraid child who was not fitting in at all. So I chose to hide my problems instead of fixing them. Great job young me 
.
Then porn became highly accessible on the internet. It was like a godsend for a boy who was struggling with connecting to people at school, and having a hard time generally. Not gonna repeat much here though. I have been a porn user for 20 years and I think I always was addicted. It wasn’t until last year or so I started to try and quit watching porn. Before that I never thought that was an option or it didn’t occur to me that I should stop. I don’t really remember why I suddenly found out I needed to stop. But I tried and I tried. Every time I couldn’t go farther than a month. While I did this I never stopped masturbating. That had become an compulsion, so big that I now have problem knowing what I would do without it. It’s also probably the worst thing I could do now if I relapsed.
But then this year everything seemed to fall apart for me. The anxiety I had been holding back and not doing anything with. The depression that was forcibly crippling me didn’t let go. I needed to do something, but I was incapable of doing anything. Then in September I crashed and not long after I stopped watching porn. Why? Because I had overdone it in the summer and it started to sicken me and the thoughts I was having when I crashed. I think my intrusive thoughts and the porn-induced images started here.
The first month
September was a fucking horrible month.
– I was scared of everything
– My heart was beating fast all the time
– I was having intrusive thoughts
– Porn-induced images when walking outside
– Porn clips emerging in my mind
– I was having panic attacks
– I felt my anxiety was stuck in my throat
– Trouble concentrating. my thoughts were racing all the time
– Doom and gloom mood the whole time
– Didn’t see a future for myself at all.
– Crying constantly
It was a horrible time, and I was so afraid that I might do something. I started getting some suicidal thoughts. I was fucking scared all the time, and I didn’t see a way out of this at all. I have always had a good relationship with my parents. I could always talk to my mother about anything. So I started calling her every day with something new she needed to help me with. But it wasn’t a good way to deal with it at all. Because I didn’t want to work through, I just needed someone to talk to. After a while I started to open up to friends as well. Not about the porn, but about everything else. That seemed to help, but not by much.
Started to get more social because I knew I had to do that. It was hard in the beginning, because when you have a breakdown like I did, you still feel alone when being social with someone else.
I still masturbated during this month. Because, yes compulsion, needed to fulfill it.
The Second month
October was better overall, thing started to calm down
– I wasn’t so scared all the time
– The panic attacks was calming down, and I was getting better at managing them before they could get going
– My head was still racing with thoughts and I had a hard time stopping them.
– The porn-induced images was the same and also my intrusive thoughts, but were less frequent at the end of the month.
– My anxiety wasn’t that bad
– My concentration was starting to get better.
– Not as much doom and gloom mood.
– I still didn’t see a future for myself
– Had days when I was really happy
October was overall better definitely. I started to do some stuff that I needed to do for myself. I was taking action, I was facing my fears and I was trying to write stuff down. I was talking to my mother still, but she set some demands. I was gonna write to her every day. After a while it started getting positive. I also decided to go see a therapist. I got an appointment, but that was far in the future. So I needed to do stuff to get better. So from 20th October and onwards I really started to work on myself. My mother also suggested a forum, and I was looking for one. Then I found yourbrainonporn.com and things started to click into place.
I also decided to tell my parents about my porn addiction. At first they were shocked that I had watched it for so long. I thought they knew, but they said that they didn’t know that I was watching it for so long.
Around 20th of October I stopped masturbating, because I was figuring it wasn’t good for me. I think some of my progress probably could have been faster and better had I stopped doing that as well. But what did I know? I didn’t know about nofap, not that much anyway. And I didn’t think porn was a bad idea until I did it too much and I crashed.
The third month
November was the best month so far.
– Still kinda scared but that was my social anxiety that I hid away all this time.
– My most social month because I really wanted to.
– Stared meditating for real around middle of November.
– Started exercising regularly every week.
– Started my journal on this forum trying to figure stuff out.
– My mood was balancing tremendously.
– My intrusive thought was steadily declining with help of meditation and my ignoring methods.
– Porn-induced images more manageable, and as I write now of (4th December) they are more or less gone.
– I don’t see much of my old porn clips or fantasies in my mind.
– Doom and gloom gone
– Looking forward to the future
– Balanced weeks of more happiness
November has been a roller coaster ride of feelings and figuring things out. It all started when I joined the forum and found way to be more open with myself to others. I started my journal and detailing what has happened and what I can see from what I have learned has been a true help to me. During the middle of the month I went to see the therapist. We agreed I had done a lot of great work and I should continue with that. I got a book recommendation and everything started to feel better. And a new session in January. Some panic came back after that but I persevered. After that things started to normalize. I felt more and more that my weeks was balanced and that my mood was more than good everyday. I started to exercise regularly and meditating became a daily thing. My concentration also became better and better every day.
I felt that my doom and gloom mood was over and done with. I saw a way out of my shitty life and the way porn had fucked everything up for me. I started applying for jobs, I started to take care of myself slowly but surely, started being more positive to myself, started thinking more positive and so on.
I also stated to get more involved on the forum, trying to motivate others and that has helped me in turn.
What about now? In December?
Yes, what about now? How am I feeling? Are there any clear benefits I have seen for myself? I haven’t mentioned everything that happened to me, I just wanted to give a clear overview of what has happened to me.
Right now for two-three weeks in a row I am feeling quite calm. I feel like I am on the verge of starting a new chapter in my life. I am still figuring things out and probably still will for a long time. But I am okay with that. I am not as irritable as I was. Three-four weeks ago I was irritated over everything around me. Now I am feel more calm about the stuff I was irritated over. I still get irritated, but not the amount I was, just a normal amount. My concentration is very very high and I can get things done as long as I get out of bed. Still struggling with depression and anxiety, but that is to be expected. And I don’t think too much of it all the time as I did. I still feel lonely but I am also working on that.
About the calm thing, one of my friends last weekend said that I looked good. Better than I had. He said I was looking pretty hyped up the last time he saw me (that was two-three weeks before I saw him again this time). And that I couldn’t concentrate and that I wasn’t calm at all. He said you look really calm and together. And yes I did feel like that. So to sum up:
– Concentration is better than it ever was.
– My mood is generally quite good and I am feeling better than in a long time.
– I see my future in brighter colors and I can say that I have one.
– My suicidal thoughts are completely gone.
– Porn-induced thoughts are completely gone.
– No more racing thoughts, and the intrusive ones will be gone soon.
– I have more days where I feel really happy.
– My voice is deeper, I think ha ha.
– I have become more social. Also wanting to be and I don’t want to isolate myself anymore.
– Starting to care more about me, myself and I. I need to. I always care too much about everyone else.
– Exercising three-four times a week.
– Meditating everyday, can’t go a day without.
– Feeling more self esteem coming through me.
– I do things I seldom do.
– I am more open and trying to connect with people.
When I started this journey I didn’t think I had a future, but now I am looking forward to my future. Tomorrow I am gonna start a new chapter. Getting up early, starting to fix things in my apt, write more steadily in my book, exercise more and do all the stuff I want to do. In moderation of course, I am really starting to learn that. I am gonna find ways to take care of myself better and I am gonna stop putting things off. That is a promise from me to you! I am also next year gonna start dating. Want to get out there. I feel excited about that. Don’t know how or when completely but I am figuring that out.
I just need to work more on finding the best version of me and I will be more than ready. Just need to slow some things down and let it take the time it takes . I have done all this work with the help of my mother, but also with the help of you guys. You have been commenting, liking and supporting me all the way. If it hadn’t been for you and my parents, and of course myself, I wouldn’t have gotten this far. So thank you everyone from the bottom of my heart. You mean more to me than you know!
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