In light of the unfathomable progress I have made in regards to PMO addiction this year, and the fact that I did get started on my journey to where I am today because of this sub, I feel obligated to share my story with you all. Just as a warning, I am going to get very detailed and this post will undoubtedly end up being very long.
I’m probably writing all of this more for my sake than yours to be honest. Just to put all that has happened in my life into words feels necessary as far as continuing to make progress goes. So if you look at the bulk of words in this post and choose to skip over that’s fine. But if you’ve made it this far, keep reading. I do feel that there’s a lot to learn from my story. So here goes.
As is true with many of you I’m sure, I began watching porn quite young, around 12 years old. As I grew up the usage escalated, and probably by the time I was a freshman in HS I would use porn once a day at least. I didn’t think much of it. I liked it. It made me feel good. It excited me. But the seeds of the tremendous damage that it would do to my mind in so many ways were already being planted. In my junior year of HS I got my first serious girlfriend and pretty soon into the relationship we started having sex. A lot. I was totally convinced that she and I were deeply in love, soul mates; the whole nine yards. But looking back on it now it is so clear to me that she was basically an outlet for me to get off. I truly did care about her, but I cared about having sex with her just as much. That was totally because of porn. I still used porn during the over two-year relationship, but less so than before I was having sex. When we went off to college the relationship sputtered as so many HS relationships do at that point, and we broke up within a few months. I attribute this break up mostly to me not being able to deal with real relationship problems. When she and I dated in HS our problems were so minute, simple. We would fight over things like not calling back soon enough, or not having fun doing the same things. They were easy problems to get through. But when we went off to the big scary world of college, the distance presented us with a real problem that actually required hard work for the first time. And I totally just wasn’t able to deal with that. So I lost the drive and motivation to maintain the relationship and it ended. I was never very successful with women before that, and I didn’t magically become successful after. I was not having sex with hook ups, or many partners, or even a friend with benefits situation. It didn’t bother me that much but I was horny as hell, and I went right back to using porn even more. It was during that this time that I really started to fall hard for one woman at my school. We were great friends and she just fit the bill of everything I desired in a partner. This was different than with my HS girlfriend. I was obviously totally attracted to her sexually but the emotional connection was much more real. After A LOT of pursuit, friendship building and honest to god work on building the framework for a good, romantic relationship, she started to fall for me too and we began dating my sophomore year (1). I was head over heels in love. It was great sex and all, which obviously I was giddy about, but this one was about more than sex. There were much deeper fibers to the relationship. That being said, as good as the sex was and as happy and in love we were, I do not believe that I had a healthy relationship sexually with this woman. As far as that aspect of the relationship went, I was still just projecting my PMO addiction onto her. That is something that makes me sick to this day, and will for the rest of my life. She deserved so much better than that. But we were happy, so happy. Giddy in love in our own perfect little world. But suddenly, after about six months of dating, it was like she just woke up one day and lost all the feelings (2). I was devastated. Heart completely broken. Total emptiness. And I went straight back to PMO to deal with it (3). It was then, at the age of 20 years old, that my PMO addiction reached its worst point. I’ll get back to that in a bit but first let me quickly explain why I’ve given so much detail on my past with women. I’ve just told you about the two honest to god, serious relationships with women so far in my life. And in both cases, it was my PMO addiction that ended them. Not directly, but the person that PMO had made me was not capable of being the man required to satisfy those women mentally, emotionally, and sexually. Keep that in mind folks; PMO basically makes you incapable of being in a healthy relationship.
OK, back to the story. You still with me? I’m guessing I’ve lost at least 50 percent of you by now but whatever, as I said I’m writing this more for me. So there I was, brokenhearted, lost and devastated. And I went right to PMO. I began using it at least once a day, usually about ten to twelve times a week. It was during this time that I really started to acknowledge in my head I probably had an addiction. And I knew it probably wasn’t good. But I didn’t educate myself about it. I didn’t really care and just kept on using PMO, feeling like shit afterwards and not bothering to find out why. And then, you all came into my life. I had never used reddit, only heard of it, but a friend started showing me funny subs like wtf and others, so I began lightly browsing on my own. And I found this subreddit. I spent a good couple hours reading through posts on it, researching things I was reading, and just starting to get an education on porn addiction. And it took one night. I decided I was going to quit. And for the first time in a long time I was excited about something. I was so excited, as I’m sure many of you first starting on your road to a PMO free life are, at the prospect of being happy again, the prospect of not having my life run by this addiction (4).
So I got off and running on trying to quit PMO. I did the badge counter. As I began to relapse every few days I installed the blockers on my phone and computer (5). Right from the start I was quite able to get a streak of about seven days going. But right around that 6-8 day mark, the urges would come, I’d find a trigger, and find a way around the software blocks I had put up. You all know how it goes. This went on for a long time. Over a year of one-week streaks on end, sometimes I’d get to two; I think my best in that first year of trying to quit was 18 days (6). I had all sorts of strategies for making my latest relapse the last one. OK after 2015 I’ll never watch porn again. Relapse. OK after I finish the semester I’ll never watch porn again. Relapse. OK after I turn 21 I’ll never watch porn again. All sorts of things like this. I put up more and more blockers. I kept finding ways around them. And it was because there was a skill I was not trying to hone. I was working out, getting stronger, working on gaining confidence, but there was one skill I neglected that I’m betting many of you are too. And that is the ability to embrace pain and even learn to enjoy it. It is painful for us to not watch porn. That’s why the relapses happen. Just like a drug addict feels the physical pain of not shooting up, we feel mental pain when we don’t watch porn. Our brains have been trained to do so. So not working on fighting through pain was holding me back. More on that later.
During this time I was having basically no success with women. Even though I was getting these one to two week streaks, feeling more confidence and working out, I still just had no fucking clue how to, “get girls”. And it bothered me. I really wanted a girlfriend. Beautiful women at college surrounded me and I just wanted one so bad. I had gotten a taste of what a good relationship feels like with my girlfriend from the year prior, and I wanted it again. But even though I knew the best way to pursue it was through building friendship and such as I explained earlier, I just couldn’t do that. I would talk to pretty girls, find them nice, and it would just sputter out. I had one girl that I hooked up with a few times. Totally bad sex that I hated and felt stupid for pursuing. And I had one, one-night-stand. Same reaction. Hated it and swore never to have one again (7). But that all changed early in my final semester of school, Fall 2015. I met a girl through tinder and mutual friends who lived quite far away. I met her online, but you could still tell there was a mutual curiosity and attraction to one another. For the first time in so long I was excited about a woman. We began talking, corresponding and communicating and getting to know each other. And this was a new motivator to quit PMO. I started getting longer streaks because I wanted to quit for her (8). After a few weeks we set up plan for me to go visit her, and I decided to dig in all the way and get my longest streak ever before meeting her (9). I was stating to do it, getting a good streak as the visit (and my college graduation) approached. And then it happened, as it had so many times for over a year at that point. I had a relapse at the worst time. Five days before I was set to graduate, six before I was set to go meet her (10). So I went there, feeling down on myself, but still excited to meet a woman who at this point I felt very strongly for. We had a great time, did fun stuff, laughed, and got along great. We hooked up the first two nights I was there and it was awesome. I was so glad to be physically intimate with someone who actually intrigued me emotionally and mentally again. The third day I was there, we had sex. And I’ll just say it: I fucked it up. First time having sex in over a year, nervous, anxious, and only a week removed from a relapse at this point, I did terrible (11). We still had a good time the last few days, but didn’t hook up anymore, and I could sense the disappointment. It killed me. I hated it and I felt like I had ruined a great opportunity to build happiness. Immediately after I left, now a fresh college graduate, I went on some travels overseas. And it seemed all I could think about during the whole two-week trip was my sexual incompetence, and how PMO had fucked me over again. This was a total sign that I was still completely addicted despite being able to get some pretty good streaks by now. PMO still had the power to dominate my thoughts, not even as much as a temptation at this point, but just as something that made me hate myself.
So I realize that I’ve already written a short novel, but unfortunately for you who are still reading and are probably committed to knowing how this story ends at this point, that was all just set up for the part I really want to share. My success. I got home from my short abroad trip, and immediately turned my efforts to the final preparations for something I had been planning for quite some time. Ever since I was a kid and started going hiking and backpacking, I had a dream of thru hiking the Appalachian Trail (12). I knew I would be graduating after the Fall 2015 semester for a while beforehand, so I began planning and preparing to do the hike right after. Let me say this right now to be clear: I DID NOT WANT TO DO THE HIKE TO QUIT PORN. I had wanted to do it for some time before I even knew I had a porn addiction. That being said, as I got closer and closer to the time to start my hike, and continued to fail to quit PMO, I started to view it as a great opportunity to quit. Long story short, I relapsed the night before I was set to start. Once again due to nerves. This honestly wasn’t a “one last time” relapse, it just kind of happened. I felt as shitty as ever, but my mind was already focused on what I was about to undertake. I will spare the details of the specifics of the trip just because I could literally write a book about it, but here’s what you need to know. I went into it the day after a relapse. I have not used PMO since that relapse. My longest streak beforehand was 25 days. The streak I am on now is the longest I have been on since the very first time I ever watched porn, about ten years ago now. I consider myself over my PMO addiction now. Let me tell you how I did it. First of all, I obviously had a very big advantage as far as my situation went. I was spending days, weeks at a time living in the wilderness with no cell service or Internet. I couldn’t watch PMO even if I wanted to. But I never thought of it or craved it anyways. I was doing something, I was challenging myself every day, and when you do that, your brain immediately stops giving two shits about PMO. As I’m sure is true with all of you, all of my previous relapses were on days where I wasn’t doing much, wasn’t challenging my brain, and allowed it to just hang out. It went straight to PMO. When you’re long-distance hiking, you’re brain is constantly, a hundred percent of the time, being challenged with problems. And you have no choice but to figure out how to solve them. This was the first big reason why I got over the addiction. I was occupying my brain space with productive, interesting, and vitally necessary topics other than a video of a woman I don’t know having sex. Now, the trail is very metaphorical to life, and I learned very early on the importance of taking things one-step at a time. When I had a five mile, three thousand foot climb to do, and all I thought about was getting to the top and being done, it dragged on. When I just focused on where I was on the trail at that moment, it felt so much easier. When I spent hours at a time dreaming of finishing this epic undertaking, it felt so overwhelming and daunting. When I just thought about where I was on trail, even during the earliest stages and I still had over 2000 miles left to walk, it didn’t feel so hard. You have to treat getting over PMO the same way. Yeah it’s going to be fucking hard to get to 90 days if you spend every day thinking about how many days you have left, and how long and hard that seems. Forget about the day count. Every day is day one. Just be on the step you’re on. I promise you that you’ll get to the top of the mountain if you can really do that. But it doesn’t mean you can’t do the work. I still had to walk up all of those mountains.
Over the course of the hike I grew up tremendously. I walked down Springer Mountain a boy and up Mount Katahdin a man. I learned so much about who I am, what I want, and how I want to conduct my life. But one of the most important things I am taking away from this hike is a good relationship with myself. I would almost compare my relationship with me before this hike to a bad relationship between two people, based only on sex and no care. I only cared for myself physically. I watched porn and jerked off to take care of myself. I put no care and love to myself emotionally. I didn’t bother getting to know myself. After four and a half months of hanging out with basically me and me alone, no physical stimulation, I have such a great relationship with myself. I fucking like this guy! And it feels awesome.
But the most important thing that thru hiking the AT gave me that lead to overcoming PMO addiction goes back to what I talked about earlier about persevering through pain. Thru hikers have a saying: no pain, no rain, no Maine. And if you want to finish that pilgrimage, if you want to walk 2,189.1 miles from Georgia to Maine, you better be ready to deal with the pain and rain. The reason why so few people who set out on that journey actually finish is because so many people just can’t take the pain and rain anymore. The physical pain. Sore feet day after day. Blisters. Raw pack-rash on your back. Hunger, deep, painful and frightening hunger. Exhaustion after walking 20, 30 miles a day up and down mountains. Waking up and not being able to bend your knees for ten minutes because they’re so stiff, but still throwing 40 pounds on your back and walking all day. The mental pain of having no control over what may be thrown at you. Cold. Snow. Deep, hard snow that you have to post hole miles at a time through. Rain. Driving hard, windy rains that saturate your rain jacket in about ten minutes. Feeling like you have an impossible task ahead of you and being totally alone in doing it. My life was full of pain and rain quite literally for 137 days, and I learned to deal with it. But you know what? Life is full of pain and rain every day, even if it’s not so literal as what I went through during my hike. Buddha found enlightenment when he accepted that life is pain. And I think there’s a lot to be said about that. When you can learn to accept that the world doesn’t care about you, and the forces of nature, other humans, and random chance will continue to make things hard for you no matter what, you can find true happiness. And this trip was without a doubt the happiest time of my life because I learned to accept that. Once you learn to accept it, and persevere through it, you will be free. Freedom is being OK with being in pain. Free of doubt, fear and sadness. And these are the three major causes of PMO addiction. We turn to PMO to run from these things. By thru hiking the AT, I stopped running from them. I walked through them for 2,189.1 miles. And now I am prepared to walk through them for the rest of my life.
So what can you all take away from my story? Here’s how I see it. I know that not everyone can just get up and go hiking for five to seven months to get over their PMO addiction. And I don’t want you to think that I’m saying you need to go do that or something as physically demanding and time consuming to get over your addiction. I’m not saying that (13). But what I am saying is this. For you to get over your PMO addiction, you will need to go through an experience as mentally and emotionally challenging as I did. I don’t know what it will be, you probably don’t either. But the PMO addiction will remain in your fiber until you can break your brain down, challenge it like it’s never been challenged before, and overcome that challenge. After a few weeks of hiking I was in good trail shape, and physically capable of finishing despite still having a majority of the trail left. From there, it was all mental. It was all about waking up day after day and hiking through the pain and rain just because I had challenged myself to do so. No one made me do this. I didn’t do it because I thought it was a good idea. I did it because it was a dream of mine that I want to accomplish (14). And you will find something like that. It certainly could take a while. But just keep fighting until you do. And one day you may wake up and realize you’re right in the middle of that challenge. And when you do, get excited. Get angry. Work hard, don’t quit, and walk up the fucking mountain. The view is always worth it.
So just to conclude, I am back home now. I have no blocking software on my computer or phone now. I know that urges will pop up now and again. They probably will for the rest of my life. But I’m not scared of them anymore. I don’t get scared to look at a website I know a picture of a hot girl may be on. Because I know if an urge does strike me, and that shitty little voice starts to tell me to go watch porn, I can close my eyes, and think about walking up Roan High Knob in three-foot snowdrifts. If I can do that, I can close my computer and go for a walk to get some urge off my mind. I feel my brain has completely reset. I still don’t anticipate having any big time successes with women, but I honestly don’t care at this point. I like myself so much now that I don’t have that emptiness which wanted to be filled with a girlfriend. Maybe I’ll find one soon, maybe I won’t for a while. Whatever the trail of life brings me I’m fine with. I have a lot of big plans coming up, more adventures I want to go on, more goals I want to achieve. And I’m excited to go out and go for them. I’m close to turning 22. We have no idea how long we’ll live at this point. I most likely am not even a quarter through my life. PMO addiction put a cloud over me for almost half of it to this point, but I’m so excited for the rest. Because the longer I live this way, without that sadness always in the back of my mind, the smaller of a section that period of PMO addiction will seem on my trail of life.
I’d like to thank you for reading this much if you did. As I said it was important for me to write this all out just to process it. Reddit is no longer blocked for me so if any of you want to ask questions about my story or hike or anything really I’d be happy to answer them. If you want to say something mean that’s cool too. I can take it; I’m a big boy now. Also I did get quite detailed with this so if anyone reading this identifies me please be cool and respect the fact that I’m posting this on reddit anonymously and don’t just shout out my name or even trail name. If you want to actually talk to me about it and you do think you know me than contact me privately. I’ll close with a quote. This was kind of a rallying cry for me throughout my hike, and it’s pretty obvious how it applies to what I did. But I think it applies to everyone’s life, no matter what they’re doing. If you aren’t living deliberately, you aren’t living.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” – Henry David Thoreau
Thank you all.
tl;dr: PMO addict. Hiked the entire Appalachian Trail. No longer PMO addict.
Footnotes (1)Let me just say that there is a lot to be said about beginning a relationship with a woman this way. The relationship that follows a courtship based on friendship for a long time, with no sex or physical relationship for a long time is unbelievably satisfying.
(2)Looking back on the end of this relationship now, I am almost positive that my PMO addiction, even though I was not using it that much as this point, was the reason for this overnight 180 on her part. I believe she sensed that sexually my mind was warped and didn’t want to be with someone like that. Can’t really blame her.
(3)To any of you reading this who is struggling with a broken heart let me say this: I know it sucks. I know I cannot say anything about how it’ll be better one day that will fill the pit of despair inside you. But don’t turn to PMO. Just don’t. It will make it a hundred times worse.
(4)I say my life was run by it not because it determined what I did or when I did it, but because the shame and sadness of PMO addiction was a cloud that always hung over my head. Even the best of days where awesome things happened would have a slight damper to it because deep down I hated myself for the addiction. That’s when something runs your life. When it denies you true happiness no matter what.
(5)I blocked reddit, a big trigger, eventually. This is why I stopped posting on this sub.
(6)Something I want you all struggling in this style to take away: I was still WAY happier during this time than when I was watching PMO every day. Yeah I would be super depressed after the relapses, and get frustrated as hell whenever they happened, but for the first time in so long I was going days at a time without such a dark cloud over my head. It’s not about just getting to that magic 90 day number. It’s about slowly changing your lifestyle. I wish I realized this during this period.
(7)Which I haven’t!
(8)Unfortunately this was the WRONG motivator. Don’t quit for anyone else. Quit for yourself.
(9)By this point I had lost the drive for the magical 90 day number. I was starting to understand that you can’t just go straight for it. I hope you all start to get that too. It’s important to get to that number, but you can’t make it an all or nothing thing mentally.
(10)I relapsed at this point (and many other times for that matter) because I was nervous. When we get nervous our brains seek comfort and people who are addicted to PMO find that comfort through porn. Just like compulsive eaters turn to food during high stress times, we turn to porn. Keep that in mind and try to get ahead of it during stressful periods! (Finals, job interview, health issues, etc.)
(11)Looking back on it now, the reason the sex was bad was because my mind had not reset. That’s where the 90 day number comes in. It takes about that long for your mind to reset, to stop viewing women the same way you view computer screens. Until your brain can do that you can’t really be fully and satisfyingly intimate with a woman.
(12)For those who don’t know, the AT is a 2,189.1 mile long hiking trail that goes from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Mt Katahdin, ME. Roughly 2,000 hikers each year attempt a thru-hike, hiking the whole trail end-to-end in one go. About 25% or less finish.
(13)Although if this story inspires just one of you to go out and hike the AT that’s awesome. Go do it. It will change your life in so many ways.
(14)There is a lot to be said for following your dreams. This was the first time I truly did in my life. I truly cannot describe to you the feeling of when I summited Mt Katahdin and finished. The greatest moment of my life hands down.
LINK – My Story: Five Million Steps to Recovery
UPDATE
The honesty not only felt amazing but I’m quickly learning it is an important part to getting over this addiction. Now that I am not using PMO and my brain is really starting to reset, it felt so good to be able to tell her everything I’ve been through, explain how it affected the friendship (and sometimes a bit more) that we have had in the past. I think it will make me feel closer to her in the long run and will help me make more progress with myself. She could not have reacted better too. Very understanding, and even told me she was proud of me for being brave enough to tell her everything. Honesty is truly the best folks. Don’t hide your story out of shame or embarrassment. There will be people in your life who deserve to know. Tell them, when the time is right, for both of your sakes.
By gelfie94
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