Hey everyone, my name is —— and I’m an addict, but I’ve been clean for 90 days.
applause
The journey
I didn’t keep a meticulous record of how the days went, but this visualisation of another Fapstronaut’s emotional state is a pretty accurate depiction of where I’ve been, and where I more or less am now http://i.imgur.com/kv3W1dM.png
Suffice to say this has been one of the biggest emotional journeys of my life, and while it was exhausting and at times unbearably difficult, I somehow found the strength by a combination of checking on here, watching good TV when I was truly lethargic for two weeks (imo there’s no shame in bingeing when your energy is that low), and honestly faith in this programme. Prior to starting this, I was regularly suicidal and depressed, and told myself that either this saves me, or I just kill myself and be done with it.
I made it. And now you lucky souls get to read my thoughts on it.
Superpowers
I agree that what some people might call ‘superpowers’ do exist, and while they don’t come just from sitting around per se, I think that they are an inevitable result of not suppressing your emotions, and facing reality. Prior to doing this, whenever I had a bad day or even if I was just bored, I would make sweet passionate love to my hand and that would be it; instant gratification. Biologically, I was tricking my body and brain into thinking everything was swell, despite reality arguing otherwise. Since sex with a partner on the other hand is probably going to be conducted under happy circumstances (I would hope!), this I suspect would be positive reinforcement of good behaviour for both parties, but I’m sadly yet to test this out. By all means prove me right guys.
I haven’t turned into a womanising machine regularly having sex with three beautiful supermodels and their mums, but it has changed my perspective on my dealings with the opposite sex. I feel like if I wanted to, and I have done this once or twice so far, it wouldn’t be hard to muster up the confidence and approach any beautiful women I see, but that isn’t for me. Right now the goal is to get my beautiful ex-gf back and prove that I can be the man she deserves.
I also do find myself less content wallowing in the internet these days, but still do so occasionally. To be honest this is fine, it’s a gradual process and altogether I’m doing well.
Flatlines
This is important. I found that while there is material online regarding the dreaded flatline, it was somewhat lacking. My ‘flatlines’, if that indeed is what they were, were vast and varied. I’ve experienced, more or less in this order, depression, severe irritability, nausea, crying, more irritability, flu-symptoms (how it feels the night before you get the flu), insomnia and severe lethargy, and finally from about day 70 onwards, intermittent bouts of full-on sadness from all my regrets. I can only learn from them and do my best to be the best person I can from now on. The heightened emotions can be nice but Jesus they come at a price.
As briefly mentioned above, faith in this helped, but whenever I felt completely exhausted, if I could force myself to go out and meet friends everything would be awesome. I suspect the lethargy just stemmed from mentally trying to deal with the torrent of ailments, reality, and urges. For anyone going through the same now: keep going, it gets better.
Final notes
I found it helped to tell people about things, and also just to be really honest from now on. Just to give a quick summation of the benefits I’ve seen over the 90 days:
- More confidence approaching women
- Less shame talking with anyone
- Music, films and art generally affects me more
- More honest and less antagonistic with others
- While I’m less antagonistic, I also just give less of a fuck most of the time, in a good way.
- More motivated to achieve something and spend my time wisely (said at the end of a long Reddit essay. Yeah, I know)
- More expressive generally, and I sing a lot more. Yay.
Tl;dr It’s one hell of a difficult journey, and the more you’ve suppressed the harder it’s going to be, but just do it. Unless you want to live in an artificial world where you get to pretend everything is fine when it’s not, grow up and stop masturbating. It’s really that simple.
Godspeed, fapstronauts.
LINK – 90 day report – My journey, my thoughts, and my advice: keep going.
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