Well, hello everyone. I am twenty-one years-old. I have been trying to quit PMO for eight months now. The last time I really watched pron was in September, but I haven’t quit masturbating completely yet and I’ve been peeking at some porn for a while as well. This has really got to stop, so I’ve decided to start this journal here.
The way I started was the same as everyone else. My family got high speed internet when I was fifteen and it started with pictures and then moved into videos and after only about two years (maybe not even that long) I was watching porn everyday. My taste never really escalated (in fact, I’ve always preferred pretty softcore stuff). I always knew it was a problem though, but it never really struck me how bad it was. Even back then I would watch porn when I knew I didn’t want to and I would think to myself “why did I just do this? Don’t I have anything better to do?”I never thought about quitting though. I always figured that it was normal. Even when I got my first girlfriend when I was nineteen it never really struck me that I would rather watch porn than be with her. I just figured I wasn’t attracted to her (I wasn’t, but of course now I know that that wasn’t the whole story). Which leads me to last August.
I found yourbrainonporn through another forum that I go to, completely on accident. I think that may be the best moment of my life. I fit almost all of the descriptions of a porn addict. I was amazed at how, when I really thought about it, watching porn really was like a drug. That’s why I would always do it when I didn’t want to. As I said, I haven’t M’d to porn in eight months, but I still do it. It’s definitely time to stop completely. I have quit for a month before, but for some reason I fell back into doing it. Even though I didn’t have access to porn until I was fifteen, I think I’ve been masturbating since I was twelve. Breaking a nine year-old habit is hard. In all that time I’ve been with one girl who I didn’t even like in the slightest bit, and I hardly ever had a break from PMO. As the title says, this is the end. Last night, after trying to fight some really strong cravings and urges, I ended up MO’ing. That was the last time.
I don’t know if this has been too descriptive, but if anyone wants to know anything else they can just ask. I’m trying to avoid the computer altogether (installing a web filter seems counterproductive to me), so I may only be here maybe three times a week. When I am here though, I will read other journals and do my best to help other guys out. Since I started trying to do this, I thought I could do it alone. I don’t think I can anymore, and I’m definitely too embarrassed to tell anyone I know, so I’m coming here. I really would like and need some help. I absolutely know I can do this, and there is no better time to start than now. I’ve already made a lot of progress (I can easily go a week and a half with no cravings or urges; that really is amazing to me considering I used to PMO everyday for five years) so I feel that if I go another month and then another I will be even better. So that’s my goal: two months, and then longer.
Thanks for reading this. It’s very comforting to know that I am not the only one going through this, and it’s even more comforting that there is now a forum where we can all help each other out. This has been done by countless men before, so we can do it too. We can overcome this. Summer is approaching where I live. I’m tired of looking at all these beautiful girls and their bare skin and doing nothing but whining about myself and how I’ll never be able to feel something for a real woman. I will. It will be difficult. I will fail sometimes as I have plenty of times already. But victory will of course be all the sweeter because of all those failures. It’s what I’ll be thinking about when I’m lying next to a girl. I’ll think “I overcame that. It was the most difficult period of my life, but if it weren’t for that I would not be where I am or who I am today. And I would not be here, next to this real flesh and blood human female that I love”.
I hope that all of us will be able to feel that. There’s no better time to start heading there than now. I’m getting on the blue bus, riding the snake to the lake, going insane, waiting for the summer rain.
May 18, 2012
Here are some improvements since I decided to quit PMO (in no particular order):
1) I no longer need to watch porn. Throughout almost every day my desire to watch porn videos or look at pictures or just endlessly click around is pretty much gone. The only time I do want to see it is if I get some cravings and am in danger of relapsing.
2) I feel MUCH better all of the time. My whole general mood when I was addicted to PMO was totally shitty with some very rare happy, joyful moments. It’s the exact opposite now. I feel more content and comfortable with who I am and am motivated to get things done.
3) I can talk to people. I have always been a shy person (and still am, and probably always will be) but it was crippling when I was in high school, which was when this shit all started. It wasn’t just a problem with talking to hot chicks, it was talking to anyone. I just couldn’t do it. Now I’m much more cordial all of the time and I can carry on a conversation with a person I hardly know. This has to be one of my best improvements. I hate my job quite a bit, but it would be much, MUCH worse if I wasn’t able to talk to my co-workers and have a good time with them. Almost everyone I know there is a good person and a lot of fun to be around, and they make working there a lot easier. It would truly be hell if I were closed up and quiet all of the time while working.
4) I can play guitar better and sing better. I’ve been doing both since high school and I’ve never really improved at either until now. My voice actually sounds good. There are a lot of songs I know that I actually like to hear myself sing. Considering playing music is what brings me the most peace in life, this is another thing that I’m very proud of getting better at.
5) More free time. Since I’m not constantly surfing my favorite porn websites and making playlists and jerking off, I have more time to do what I actually like to do, like reading, playing music, hanging out, anything really. In fact, I have so much free time it’s actually my greatest enemy in overcoming this shit! I always have to find some way to fill it with something other than porn. But that’s all right. It can be done.
6) More self-confidence and self-esteem. I used to be hunched over and walked with my head down. People told me I looked like a turtle. I walk with my head up and my shoulders back now. Even after a relapse and I feel like shit I tell myself to keep my head up and keep looking straight ahead.
7) My erections got stronger, for a little while, at least. For a couple of weeks I was getting morning wood. They weren’t one hundred percent, but they were there and it felt very natural. That was nice. I guess relapsing set me back a bit. I haven’t gotten morning wood for a while. There’s nothing I can do there but keep going.
8 ) I don’t worry as much. A lot of the stuff that used to bother me I just let slide now. This could be anything from the way my jackass roommate acts to rude customers at work to car problems. I just don’t care too much anymore about that petty stuff.
That’s all I can think of there for now. Now here’s my goal list:
1) No PMO for two months. I went a month before and I felt amazing. Shooting for two is the perfect goal now. I think that as soon as I hit two months I’ll be in the perfect mood and I won’t even consider masturbating and breaking my streak, which will help me go longer.
2) Get a girlfriend and/or get laid. I’m a virgin. It’s not too much fun. Sex is a good and healthy thing. I’m finally realizing that and as soon as I quit PMO completely I’ll be more motivated to go out and do this. I’ve never had a real, loving relationship with a girl. I need that as much as anyone else does, so I’m going t get it. Now, this goal is a little tricky. I don’t want to always be focusing on getting a girl. I don’t want that to be my end goal. The biggest point of quitting PMO is to gain self-control and self-discipline. I want to focus on that and then let getting a girl come naturally to me.
3) Quit smoking. I’m a social/casual smoker anyway, so this won’t be hard. After I’m done with the pack I’m on I won’t buy another. This isn’t such a big deal, though.
4) Get better grades. I’ve learned a lot from my first two years of college. Now that I have more free time to devote to school work, I’m going to use it. There’s no reason I shouldn’t. College is too fucking easy to be failing.
5) Limit computer time. Obviously this will help to stay off of the pr0n. Staying on the computer all of the time isn’t good for you anyway.
6) Notice triggers that cause cravings and avoid them. Some of the triggers are:
- Being alone after abstaining for a while. This can be avoided by walking around the block, doing push-ups, any sort of activity that burns energy. After that I’ll distract myself with a movie. That usually works really well.
- Avoid being alone in a public place, i.e. a park or empty parking lot. My favorite kind of porn was public porn. I’ve never told anyone this before, but I used to masturbate in public quite a bit. I would make sure I was secluded and no one could see me. I’d go to parks at night or during a slow time of the day. I never got caught. This has to be the worst thing I’ve done on my life. I absolutely never want to do it again. I want to put it VERY far behind me and just let it go. I know I’m ready to.
- Accidentally seeing pictures on the internet. This will be fixed by spending less time on the computer, as I’m going to.
- Women, of course. I’ve been trying not to stare too much anymore, but it’s difficult now that it’s spring and they’re all wearing such skimpy clothing. I am getting better at ignoring them though.
- Abstaining for a week or a week and a half. This is usually when cravings start to come. They’re usually pretty regular. If I can fight them, then I don’t have to worry about them for another week.
June 23, 2012,
Really well. I’m on day twenty. No chance of a relapse in my future. Still haven’t looked at any porn or nude women or anything along those lines. I’m doing well at staying away from the computer. I think I’m involuntarily doing the No Internet challenge. I don’t surf the web anymore. I log on to check the same websites every day or every other day and when I’m done checking those I turn this thing right back off. I feel so much better. I actually feel really great, even when I don’t. I don’t know how to explain that. I seem to drift between moods every week. I’ll feel good for one week and then feel like shit for three days. When this happened while I was on PMO the low points were REALLY low. Now they seem to be evening out and I come out of them very quickly.
When I’m in a bad mood it’s usually because I’m afraid I won’t ever find a woman. Sometimes I feel like giving up sex and women completely, like as soon as I’m done with my reboot I just won’t try for real women and I’ll just quit. That can make me feel pretty crappy. Because of last night I know that won’t happen. I was working with my new coworker, a hot little sixteen year-old girl. At first it seemed like it would be boring and I wouldn’t get to hang out with her. We had different things to do for most of the night. But in the last hour I got to walk around the store and condition with her. (I work at a grocery store, and conditioning, also called facing, is what the second shift has to do. It’s where we go through our entire department and pull everything up on the shelves to make them look full.) So we walked around and made sure everything looked good. We got to get a little closer than we were before. We joked and played around. She touched me a few times. She put her hand on my back when she was trying to jump and get something off of a top shelf and she stood real close to me when we talked. When we passed over the toy aisle she picked up a pair of toy hand cuffs and went “Oooohhh” and said she liked handcuffs. I just laughed. I couldn’t really say anything to that. She’s only sixteen, so if someone heard us they would have got a little suspicious. I pushed her around on our cart while we walked the store. We continued to mess around until the end of the night and it was fun.
That may not sound like much, but it felt great to know that I actually could get that close to a chick. Being touched was great (I know that sounds lame as shit, but whatever. It really was awesome). It put me in a good mood. It’s too bad I won’t see her next week, or at least I won’t work with her. She may come in on one of her days off. Knowing I could actually get a girl and my chances aren’t as bad as I thought they were is comforting. And it was even more comforting to know that I could resist a relapse despite hanging out with a hot chick all night.
So, yeah, that’s what’s happening. I’m looking forward to hitting thirty days. Only ten more left. That’s all for now.
July 26, 2012,
Day fifty-three. One week away from sixty. Ever since last week when I had that first bout of urges, I’ve been fighting more for the past couple of days. They’re essentially gone now, and I hope they stay gone. These were the first urges I’ve had to fight during this reboot. The first six weeks went by in a breeze. I’d like to make the next six go by just as easily. As always, I’ll have to stay away from the computer to do that. I’ve been doing well though. I only use the computer for an hour a day like I said I would. I haven’t had a wet dream in a few weeks and still no major morning wood, but that’s all okay. I’ve very proud of myself for making it this far.
I’m doing so great and every day that I don’t watch porn or jerk-off I feel even better. It’s an amazing feeling to be able to exert self-control and be able to stop myself from doing something I wouldn’t want to do. Tonight I get to work my entire shift with my cute co-worker. I think we’ll have some fun. That’s all for now.
September 08, 2012,
I’m currently on day ninety-seven of my reboot, and I’m feeling great. My mental clarity is better than ever. I used to be very shy and reserved, but now I can talk to anyone, stranger or acquaintance or close friend, without any worries. I play my guitar better and sing better. I can focus on tasks better. I’m getting all of the good stuff of the reboot really, the biggest change being that I don’t hate myself anymore. As a teenager, I was filled with nothing but self-loathing and I carried that around with me for years until I discovered YBOP and started rebooting. Now I am more comfortable with myself than I have ever been. I feel as good as I did when I was a child, and I’ve got all the added benefits of having almost no fear of anything anymore, whether it’s rejection or failure or whatever. But I’ve still got one little problem.
I’m not feeling any resurgence of my libido at all. Almost nothing. I’ve been getting looks from chicks quite a lot lately at school and at work. I read that this starts to happen around this time in a reboot, and it is, and I’ve become more aware of it. I visited a friend at his work not too long ago and one of his female co-workers, who was amazingly hot, was checking me out from the moment I came in the door. I looked her in the eye when we talked and I noticed a little tingling in my pants as we talked. That was a nice feeling, but that’s all that has happened. I haven’t had any other moments like that. My morning wood is pretty strong, but it happens infrequently. Maybe one or two days out of the week. I’ve also begun to notice that women don’t seem very attractive to me. When I see a really good-looking chick, even if she’s an eight or nine, I hardly even care. I’ve quit checking chicks out in public because I’m not really concerned with doing it. I hardly think about sex anymore, or how to get it, or getting a girlfriend, or anything like that. I hardly have wet dreams and when I do I forget about them later in the day. It’s almost like I’m becoming asexual.
I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas about why this might be happening. Could I still be flatlining? My PMO habit did last five years and I’ve been masturbating for about eight or nine years, so maybe my body is just taking longer to get used to being without it. Also, I have taken a few peeks at porn during this reboot. During weeks six and seven I was very close to a relapse because of that. But I got over it. The first six weeks of this reboot were a breeze and it’s been easy since that time too. But I’ve still taken small looks at porn every few weeks. The last time was earlier this week, and before that it was about a month ago. But they weren’t really binges or anything like that. I’d look up some pictures of some of my old favorite nude models and browse pictures for about ten minutes and then get bored and quit. I had none of the old feelings like racing heartbeat and I didn’t get an erection. Could these little peeks be holding me back? The whole point of a reboot is to quit pornography. Maybe even that little bit is holding me back. I don’t know.
October, 22, 2012, LINK TO POST
Anyone can make it – but don’t get comfortable once you have.
Last August I discovered Yourbrainonporn.com and had all the same revelations and went through all of the same things that everyone else here did. I won’t go into the details too much because they’re about the same as everyone’s here. If you’d like to read my story, my journal is on here. I’ll give a little over view, though.
I’d been watching porn since 2006. The type of porn never escalated. The only thing I can say is that I had a thing for public porn and I would sometimes masturbate in public. I have no doubt that this exhibitionism was brought on by porn. Before I watched porn I masturbated as normally as any teenager and had no desire to do it outdoors or in public at all. After I came across some exhibitionist images and videos and began to watch them more frequently, I wanted to do that myself. This was easily the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life and it haunts me to this day. I think it always will be a stain on my own personal history. I would masturbate a lot back then, even when I didn’t want to. Even at other people’s houses. During my PMO years I had all of the typical PMO side effects: no self-confidence or self-esteem, I loathed myself. I loathed other people because of that. I loathed women because they payed no attention to me. I only viewed them as sex objects. I was horribly anti-social and anxious around people. All of that good stuff that you’ve read about, or, if you’re on this website, probably experienced yourself. It was awful.
So when I decided to reboot a year ago I had a very rocky start. I would only get through a week and then relapse, and then another week and then relapse. But after a few tries I would make it to two weeks. Two weeks would turn into three and that kept going until in March I finally made it a month. I relapsed but I could still go a few weeks without masturbating and my porn use had diminished GREATLY. I had no desire to view it. On 3rd June this year I masturbated one last time and then decided that that was enough. That was when I finally made ninety days.
It really does feel amazing to have made it. I still cycle through moods every few weeks like I always have, but it’s so much easier to handle these swings and they aren’t nearly as bad as they were when I PMO’d. They actually feel natural. My confidence has increased around women substantially. I don’t get anxious around them anymore (or around any stranger, for that matter). My focus and concentration have improved. I sing and play guitar better, because now I actually pay attention to what I’m doing and what I need to improve on. I don’t know how to describe how it feels to have come this far. I really do feel different. And of course, I find real women much more attractive. I’m friends with one of my cute coworkers and whenever she stands next to me and I smell her perfume I just feel like I want her so bad. It’s a great feeling. And women notice me more. Just last week these three girls followed me around the store I work at for a bit, giggling and trying to get my attention (I ignored them because I thought they were high-schoolers. I’m twenty-one, so I didn’t want to take my chances. But it was nice still). Like I said, it isn’t easy to describe how different my life is. There are so many possibilities that open up to you when you stop wasting your time on internet porn. I have a better appreciation for my relationships with my friends. I make new friends easier. I’m not nervous to be in a public place alone anymore. There have been so many more benefits I wouldn’t know where to start to list them. It’s really amazing.
But there is a downside. First off: this has been said before, but it bears repeating: quitting PMO is not a cure-all. It will not make every problem in your life disappear. You will not become an alpha male on that mystical ninetieth day. You have to actually work on all of your other problems to find solutions for them. Quitting PMO will certainly give you the time, energy, motivation, and clarity of mind to do that. But it will not do it for you. I’ve found that out myself. I know that there are plenty of other reasons why I have trouble getting a girlfriend and what I will have to go through to get over them. I still have bad days and, sometimes, even cravings still. Which leads me to my second point….
Don’t ever get complacent. This is an addiction that can still rear its ugly head. This has just happened to me. I masturbated after one hundred and twenty-three days. I got hard by just feeling myself and masturbated very normally. It was nice. I felt none of the negative after effects either. The problem is that now I have masturbated four times in the three weeks since then. I don’t like that at all, especially since I’ve taken some peeks at porn before a couple of those sessions. This doesn’t disparage me too much. The negative effects have been mild – so far. Which is why I’m stopping again. This will ABSOLUTELY NOT become a problem again. I’m going the ninety days without porn and masturbation again and I’m going to be even more strict this time. This little slip-up has just been a learning experience. I have no doubt that I will make it very easily.
I still count this journey as a success. I’ve done exactly what I wanted, which was to remove porn and over-masturbation from my life. Although this addiction has proven itself to be still kicking a bit, its most certainly in its death throes. Hell, its already dead. This little slip-up was just a ghost of it. This will be the last time I have to count the days. I’ve come so far. Just last summer I was a full-blown PMO addict. Now, on any given day, not only do I not want to view porn, I don’t even think of it. It’s nothing anymore. It’s gone.
Anyone can do this. It takes time. I’ve been at this for a little over a year now. It’s very difficult, especially at first, but it gets easier. You have to come to a point where you don’t just know that you should quit and why you should quit, you have to feel it. As soon as that feeling comes you have made it to where you want to be. I hope this has been descriptive enough. If anyone has any questions or wants any advice feel free to ask me in the thread or even send me a PM. I won’t be on the forum all of the time, but I will check back fairly regularly.
I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported me in my journal and helped me through this shit. We can all do this. There was a time in our lives when we didn’t have porn. We can make time without it. It can be here again.
Good luck to everyone here, and don’t ever give up.
May 13, 2012, LINK TO JOURNAL
By Squarekiller23
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