BY – Champion
June 16, 2012
Hi everyone, I’m Champion.
I’m a champion. Just like you, everyone else on this board and elsewhere. Did you realize that you are the culmination of a bloodline of hundreds and hundreds of persons who overcame wars, famines, diseases, battles, oppression and catastrophes. Take a moment to fully realize that. Many times our forefathers have stood on a battlefield and emerged victorious, over and over again. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t be here. Only the strongest and smartest would survive, they would have offspring and again only the strongest and smartest would survive and so on and so on… And now we are here!
We have the blood of champions running through our veins! We can do anything!
The enemies of humankind have changed. Many of us are no longer challenged by war or famine. Today’s enemies are more treacherous. And one of them is porn addiction. But I believe that, like every challenge before, we will overcome this.
My personal battle started when I must have been 12 years or so. Like everyone else I discovered dirty pictures. For many people this might have been harmless but I remember beating it 5 times a day sometimes, even in my early days of porn. The real problem probably started when I got a own desktop computer on my room and free username+password to a porn site at the age of 16-17. I indulged fully in it. Still, my situation was manageable. Downloading cost time and there were only so many interesting videos. But things got worse as I discovered the free streaming sites.
At age 20 I moved out on my own. In the years before I had developed tastes in porn. My first particular appetite, that I can remember, was for anal. Then I probably had a couple other ones. At one point I got into face riding, that transcended into female domination and that escalated into tranny porn. Something I had stumbled upon some years earlier and excited me in some twisted kind of way yet disgusted too. The disgust and shame was greater than the excitement at the time. Now it was all I would watch.
This lead to a lot of social anxiety, I felt like a dirty, twisted fuck. It also lead to insecurity about my sexual orientation, I started wondering whether I was gay. I was deeply unhappy.
[WARNING: The next part may contain TRIGGERING content]
But the story doesn’t stop there. One evening I passed by the red light district as I left a friends house. Just to look. But you guessed that it didn’t stop there. One woman let me in and started talking to me. I found her very hot but something caused me to ask her whether she had a dick. She said no, then she asked if that’s what I like. I replied no, then she pulled me in and closed the curtains. We start making out and feeling each other up. We spend some time like that and then she tells me I have to leave.
The next weeks, maybe months, the thought of that night keeps fleeting through my mind. I also keep wondering about the shape of her body, her throat and her voice.
One night, I get an urge to go visit her. She pulls me in right away and we start hitting it off again. My hand goes into her panties and then I feel it. She looks at me but I tell her I don’t mind. She tells me to undress and she gives me a blowjob. We spend a couple hours talking and making out. When I leave she asks for my phone number, but I don’t give it too her, I’m afraid anyone will find out.
[End of Possibly Triggering Part]
I never told anyone of this.
I spend months disgusted, afraid, confused, in denial. And my social anxiety and insecurities about being gay get worse of course. Eventually I have sex with girls again. But I have problems reaching my climax. I have a suspicion that it has something to do with my masturbation. And finally when searching Google about it, I stumble upon YBOP. Thank the Universe!
I begin recovering October of 2011. I relapse a couple of times but eventually I’m convinced that I’ve rebooted my brain. Officially I don’t PM anymore, but in reality I have a P binge every 2 to 3 weeks or so. Every time after I feel like shit, after 2 to 3 weeks I’m feeling pretty confident, then I relapse again. I tell myself that’s acceptable more or less.
Some weeks ago I turned 23. This caused me to reflect on many aspects of my life, P being one of them. I decide to make a real stand. I set a mark for a 100 days. “Never again” is the ultimate goal of course, but in practice it just doesn’t work for me. I need something to aim at, something realistic. And when I hit that goal I can set a new one, a bigger one.
I was into 2-3 weeks of abstinence at the time, but I decided to start at day one. I’m on day 19 currently, plus those 2-3 weeks. So I’m actually 33-40 days clean now. The longest I ever went was 1 month, that felt pretty good. I’m feeling even better now. I enjoy being productive, social and outgoing. I feel good about myself, my confidence is way up. The effect I have on woman is crazy, the way they look at me, smile at me, talk to me. And the effect they have on me is crazy too. Everything is better, you know, the usual, everything you heard before.
I’m not ashamed of the things I did, I’ll probably tell some of the people close to me soon, at least a part of it.
I do feel some sense of loss, for all the lost hours, lost energy, lost relationships, lost chances and unfulfilled potential. But I also realize that every man must walk his own path. I wouldn’t be the man I am today if it wasn’t for all the hardships I’ve been through. And that goes for my P addiction too. Yesterday I was even able to consider possible positive effects of my P habits as a kid. I might’ve got involved in more wilder, bad things, leading to a(nother) dark path. On the other hand I might’ve done more good things. Who knows really.
All I know is, there is only forward from here. I’m positive and optimistic. I’m convinced beyond a doubt that I can do it. And if I can do it, we all can.
I want to keep a journal here. Because I’ve experienced keeping a journal is healing and helps the process. Also this is a step towards openness about the whole issue on my part.
Let’s do this!
Back From Trip – 71 Days
August 7th, 2012
So I’m back from my 5 week trip to Vietnam. It was… Epic. The stuff of legends. It’s my second day back, and today I started feeling a little travel sick (the opposite of home sick).
A lot of things happened. I honestly feel like a different man. Or more accurately, I feel like a man now, as opposed to a boy. I feel my mind and personality have altered. Evolved. Partly simply because of the long time I’ve gone without PM now. Partly because of the experience of travel.
There’s a lot I want to share with you guys. I’ll divide it up into separate posts to keep things manageable for both the author and the reader 
First off, and this is funny, Porn and Rebooting actually crossed my mind very, very little. There where times where it didn’t cross my mind a single time for days, maybe weeks even. I actually kind of forgot about it. I was no longer relating everything to my reboot. It became a non-issue. Something non-existant in my reality. A consequence of this is that all the positive effects of recovery (confidence, libido, being social and outgoing, etc.) stopped being just effects of a chosen behavior. They actually started becoming part of my being, my identity. I wasn’t confidence because I stopped PM, instead I was confident because I am confident. It’s just who I am.
I’ve heard of accounts where guys who’ve been rebooting for a long time stop noticing the positive effects. As if these effects where just a temporary thing because of the body going through withdrawal, after which all the positive effects dissappear and the person basically returns to where he was before.
I think what actually happens, is that the positive effects just become normal. We start taking them for granted in a way. We become them. Do confident people notice “Hmm, I’m so confident today”? Or do people with high libido stop and think “WTF, I’m so interested in women today”. Of course not, it’s just part of who they are, it’s normal to them, they don’t think anything of it.
This is critical to full recovery in my opinion. At some point PMO and recovery have to stop being a day to day issue in our lives. We have to stop associating ourselves with porn addiction. We have to stop viewing ourselves are porn addicts. It’s not who we are. It’s just a problem that developed over time. We have to adress it. And then move on. Like all other problems. I don’t agree with this notion that addiction is a life long disease. Constructing the problem like that isn’t very benificial in my opinion. It’s self-defeating, it’s depressive and in the end it’s self-fulfilling.
So my advice, and this is for those guys who have put some distance between porn and themselves, is to get on with your life at some point. When that time comes you will know. Resisting the urge won’t be a day to day struggle anymore. Don’t deliberately try to push the problem away. That’s not moving on, that’s repressing, that’s running away and hiding. You know the time has come when you notice yourself thinking less and less of the problem, simply because you and your mind are too occupied with all the beautiful things in life. Meeting people, having fun, being outside, enjoying the sun and the air, doing what you love doing. When that time comes, don’t be afraid to just let it go.
LINK TO POST – Life Is Good
Janurary 5, 2012
I looked forward to this: The day I could honestly consider my recovery a Succes Story. That day is now, 1 year, 2 months and many relapses after discovering YBOP.
As I sit here I’m wondering what I should write about. I could tell you about my darkest moments. I could tell you about the day I was walking through the red light district and a woman invited me in. She turned me on. A lot. She liked me. We kissed. And then she sent me off.
Life is good.
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