I’m proud to say that after coming across this sub sometime in Feb 2014, I completed 2 years porn-free, as of April 10, 2016. I had been watching porn of various types since at least 1999, on 33kbps modems. The reason I got serious about stopping was that I realized that access to porn was far too plentiful in the modern Internet age, and of a high enough quality that it was proving to be a dangerous trap for people like me, who have a history of not dealing well with the setbacks that life often puts us through.
For those who are interested, I posted about my experiences after 1 year porn-free on an old Reddit account here: https://www.reddit.com/r/pornfree/comments/3293×2/365_days_life_now_vs_life_then/
My goal here in posting this update is to let you know that things do get better and you have absolutely made the right choice in leaving porn behind. Here’s what I’ve been able to accomplish after 2 years porn free:
- Quit smoking cigarettes after trying for 7 years (6 months into PF)
- Landed a 5-figure raise at my job (15 months into PF)
- Strongly cut back on smoking weed after trying for 4 years (21 months in, 3 months clean and for the first time I’m confident it will stick this time)
- Developing an ‘information diet’ to reduce distractions, cut down Internet browsing time and minimize reading/watching things designed to make you live in fear/anger/despair.
- Living with integrity. Making slow, incremental efforts to leave behind bad, guilt-inducing habits (smoking, drugs, porn), and rebuilding my self-esteem by exercising regularly, eating well and training my mind to be open to a positive outlook on life.
Details are below. Just as a word of warning, the rest of this post is almost 2000 words long.
I graduated from college right when the 2008 recession hit, and ended up living in my mom’s house working an awful $10/hr bookkeeping job for a small business that constantly cut corners to overwork the staff and stiff them on health benefits. I also had thousands to pay back in student loans at the time. Recession or not, a big part of the problem was that I was unfocused in school, chronically anxious and depressed, and spent as much time smoking weed and cigarettes and as I did studying.
For me, Porn had begun to represent a easy but incredibly deceptive form of stress relief. It provided a very minor short term gain, but quietly began to reinforce extremely negative views of myself, as well as the world around me; the recession really made me feel that economic stability was no longer a realistic ideal.
I did grow out of that depressive funk after a few years, and started working my first steady job. The stability of the job, and the maturity brought on by age started to make me think differently about who I was and what I wanted from life. At around the 6 to 9 months porn free, I felt confident that I had thrown off the chains of anxiety, depression and self-loathing that porn had contributed to, and was ready to get on with my life and focus on achieving my goals.
After 2 years, I’ve realized some changes in me that I wanted to share to let you know what is possible if you stick to this.
Images and memories fade: I’ve seen a number of posts from people saying they can’t forget some of the things they’ve seen. I can say that from my experience, yes, some of those will never completely go away. But the vast majority will. I had a 300GB stash and regularly had sessions where I’d click the browser Close button and see a message saying “You have 130 tabs open. Are you sure you want to close the window?”. I cannot remember 95% of what I’ve seen. But, I can remember 5% and that may be a lot for some of you. Here’s the thing, it doesn’t really matter now. I can recall some details, and shrug it off. Those images don’t have a hold on me anymore as I have finally left behind the shame, sexual repression and idle, distraction-prone mindset that would previously cause me to relapse. I have developed habits and healthy activities that now take up more of my time and limit my idle Internet time. I’ve made a decision to go out and get what I want in life, so those images and thoughts are quickly replaced with other, more important things.
- You learn to deal with the churn of long-repressed emotions: One of the first side effects of being porn-free was an unexpected one: I started to feel thoughts and emotions again. Part of the reason porn began to develop a grip on me was my lack of success in romantic encounters with women in my 20s. An unexpected effect of porn was that it turned my natural, human feelings of sexual desire into a claustrophobic, deviant, sleazy secret that made me feel ashamed of wanting human intimacy. The end result? I internalized my sexual desires and manifested them through porn. Externally, I began losing interest in pursuing relationships. I hadn’t experienced a real-life crush since I was 18; the negative thought patterns I’d developed about myself quickly overrode the natural human emotions of being attracted to someone. Rather than being turned on or fantasizing about someone real, my mind had programmed itself to think that I would be unsuccessful in pursuing someone physically attractive, and that I’d be better off with the artificiality of porn to fulfill my needs.
- Take inventory of yourself: You have to take a serious look inwards and identify the things in your life that make you unhappy. Dependence on porn is a symptom of a deeper underlying issue related to related to something in your present circumstances (or perhaps a trauma from the past) that is telling you that the way for you to cope is through the escape of porn. For me, one of my major fear factors was that I was a perennial underachiever. I rarely did my best, and that was because I was convinced that my best would not be good enough for the things I want in my life. I feared that if I gave 100%, failure would still be inevitable, and I would have a nervous breakdown of some sort. That’s not true! I achieve a great level of mental peace simply by working, however little or however much, towards my goals. Taking those steps is rewarding, especially if you have lived a life in which you have constantly felt like a failure. It’s about being process-oriented, and not outcome-oriented.
A bonus of this is that you begin to challenge yourself as you realize your ambitions. For instance, at my previous jobs, I would often carry out tasks and projects that I knew would not help the company build revenue, with regards to the market we were trying to sell products to. But I would simply accept it and not propose an alternative to the boss. I did this to avoid confrontation (if my boss disagreed), or the burden of extra work and responsibility (if he agreed). In my mind, I rationalized working a job I didn’t like because when I got home, I would have the release of porn. The effect of this was subtle, but as I said before, did a lot of damage in terms of reducing my image of myself.
No longer. At my current job, I landed a 5-figure raise last year because I developed and carried out a strategy to sell our product to a new market. This wasn’t easy, as bosses rarely like to be told (or realize) that they are wrong about something, especially from a subordinate. It wasn’t like I gave one magical presentation, and he said “Great work! Here’s your raise!”. I overstepped my boundaries sometimes, discussions often got heated, but I was ultimately able to get him to understand my perspective and why I believed my plan would work. This required confidence in my plan, and a ton of work (even outside of office hours) to prove, both to my boss and myself, that my plan was the right one. I also had to deal with the struggle of regulating my newly resurgent emotions during this trying period. The old me would have kept my head down and followed orders without argument, because I repressed my ambitions totally; I would have just wanted to pull a paycheck, buy weed when I needed it and escape to my lonely porn-ified existence when I got home, and rinse and repeat the next day. Believe me, that is not a life you want.
- Develop an information diet. Part of the reason we fall prey to the easy release of porn isn’t because we’re sexual deviants, but rather because we have screens in front of us for the majority of the day. The outcome of this is that our minds are in a near-constant state of distraction, which leads to a lack of focus, procrastination and pointless web surfing. Accessing porn is a symptom of that type of behavior. Think about whether or not you really need to check Reddit/Facebook/CNN 10 times a day. Personally, I have realized that the majority of the news we are exposed to is of a negative nature, and creates this feeling inside of us that the world is an ugly, hateful place. Don’t get me wrong, It’s important to know what’s happening in the world; all I’m saying is that trying to understand the world in the form of Twitter updates, clickbait headlines, and 100-word blog posts simply programs our minds to constantly comb the web for more information.
- The reason this is the case is because media today is a click- and ad-driven business; it’s in their interest to break up say, an Apple product announcement into 10 blog posts. That helps their bottom line, but it does nothing for us, the readers. In my experience, it is far more time-efficient and less mentally taxing to set aside a specific time of day for social media and news reading, and stay away from it for the following 24 hours. If you already do something like that, I’d suggest going one step further, and limiting your news reading to 2-3 trusted sources of long-form journalism. For example, I subscribe to BusinessWeek and The Economist. It’s only once a week, but I feel far more knowledgeable by reading 500-2000 word articles on a limited number of subjects than 100 word blog posts (and toxic comments sections) of 20 different topics, most of which I have no interest in, but clicked on due to an interesting thumbnail or misleading headline.
I haven’t perfected this, far from it. Muscle memory comes into play a lot. Sometimes when my mind is feeling distracted, my fingers will start typing out the URL of a tech blog or news site, and I have to stop myself, or close the tab when the page comes up. It’s important to create a list of bookmarks of sites that you know have high quality content that you will gain knowledge from reading. If you’re working on other goals or good habits, for example fitness, creative writing, etc. make sure that you focus your Internet time on reading that kind of content, and not on things that you can’t control, and help reinforce feelings of powerlessness or weakness.
- Listening to motivational tapes: I’ll admit, this isn’t for everyone. For a long time, I dismissed “positive thinking” material because I was severely depressed and feeling helpless, and I didn’t think it would help me. After about 12 months porn free, having made advances in my life, and developing a more positive mindset, I started listening to Youtube videos of Les Brown and Eric Thomas. There are Firefox/Chrome extensions that convert the video into an MP3 file that you can put on your phone and listen to whenever you want. There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about these tapes, but one way in which it’s been very effective for me is the way they act as reminders things we often forget. For example, our tendency to think negatively about ourselves, and the importance of counteracting that by telling yourself one positive thing about yourself each day. Or reminding yourself that change is hard, and that the pain of making change is temporary, while the pain of fear, guilt and regret is forever.
Anyway, I think I’ve blown past 2000 words here, so I’ll stop. I hope some of this info has been helpful to you guys. The struggle is worth it! You CAN get past this!
LINK – 2 years porn free: 30yo, and I feel like a completely different person
by tankjones3
ONE YEAR REPORT – 365 days: life now vs life then
I joined this subreddit a year ago after I had a rock bottom moment with this beast. The thing about rock bottom is you’re more motivated to quit than you might have been before.
So in my case, I had no relapses, except for 2 mins of uncertainty 2 months in when the urge was overwhelming. Thankfully, I couldn’t find what I was looking for, and that was enough for me to summon the strength to close out my browser and walk away.
What my life was like before:
- 8 years of high-speed internet and ever-improving streaming sites allowed me to go through a starlet’s entire filmography within 30 mins. A 300GB stash in my hard drive, which I barely ever watched more than once because I was constantly looking for something new.
- Couldn’t get it up in real life, not without the sleaze factor that porn provides
- Periods of severe anxiety and depression following a session. Mental haze, feeling paralyzed in my chair for 5-10 mins
- Canceling hang outs with friends because I’d be too depressed and dazed to maintain a conversation
- A sinking feeling that I wouldn’t be able to have a normal relationship with someone as long as this was a problem.
My life now:
- Job promotion, raise, making significant contributions to company’s marketing strategy
- Girlfriend of 6 months, never worried about “performing”, although normal relationship doubts are there
- Spending less time on the web (although I’d like to improve that further)
- Playing sports in the summer, hitting the gym more regularly, reading more books (autobiographies are my favourite)
What do I feel like now?
Like I’m in more control of my sexuality, and by extension, my entire personality. Porn was this foolish addiction that trapped my normal sexual urges in a box, telling me to milk myself like a cow at certain times of the day, in front of a PC.
Instead, I have much more confidence interacting with women I have a romantic interest in, and flirting and conversations are fun, instead of feeling like a chore. When you stop, you slowly begin to forget the scenes burned into your brain, and gradually your brain stops trying to work overtime to draw that distinction between behaviour of girls in porn and those in real life.
The feeling of control you start getting around the 3 month mark has benefits far beyond leaving the depression behind. It’s a feeling that you’re your own person, and you regain that youthful energy you had a kid, where you could play outside for hours at a time, or read something with real interest, without that nagging part of your brain telling you to open up your porn bookmarks.
I even managed to quit smoking cigarettes, another bad habit that had dogged me for 7 years. I hope to be able to quit smoking weed as well; that’s been more difficult, but I have to say that I can handle the side effects much better now than when I was smoking and PMO’ing.
For those who are struggling, I want to let you know that it is worth it. This stuff doesn’t come easily, because bad habits are harder to break than good habits. That’s literally WHY they’re called “bad habits”. It pays off, big time. Hang in there!
by tankjones
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