Age 24 – I realized that “happiness is inside us”.

DISCLAMIER: THIS POST IS LONG AND FULL OF UNFOCUSED BLABBERING. ALSO, I’M NOT A NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER, SO IF YOU DON’T WANT YOUR EYES TO GET HURT, BETTER BRING SOME PROTECTION WITH YOU.

So I have reached this proud number of 90 days without PMO. And I would like to share some of mine feelings about this with you.

{tl;dr starts here} Let me tell you my story first. I started to making a bald man cry while watching a very peculiar kind of movies when I was like 14 and cultivated this habit for 10 long years. I guess that porn used to be so appealing to me because I was terribly socially awkward, I had zero friends (and a whole bunch of bullies ready to make me feel like shit whenever they saw me passing by) and even conducting a simple conversations with girls was way beyond my capabilities. So in my case PMO was not a root case of my issues but rather some sort of medium which allowed this issues to last in my adult life. I mean, I managed to become a bit less awkward but never gained self-confidence, I was often depressed (sometimes to point of suicidal thoughts) and never had any kind of love life (yep, 24yo virgin signing in, hello). My nofap journey began a long time ago, actually. I hated porn and tried to quit almost since the beginning of this addiction. Though back then I didn’t realise how big influence of xxx movies on psycho-physical condition can be. My wish of leaving this shit was based purely on ethical basis. Simply, I had a gut feeling that something about me being turned on by, for example, humiliation and spending hours on watching this stuff is way fucking off. But I was always failing after about one week. But once I stumbled upon “the great porn experiment” TED talk and it was a true eye opener for me. It made me realise that I can change my life for better if I throw porn away. I know it sounds cheesy, but it really gave me hope. And also thanks to this talk I found out about nofap community. I had first long streak last autumn. I relapsed after a month and a half, but it was priceless experience. I spent winter and early spring on merry eel milking and then the breakthrough came. Here I was sitting in a bus, coming back home from a party. I was frustrated as fuck after whole night of watching people in relationships (and generally speaking happier than me) and I felt immensely useless. I was so tried of my life that it felt like somebody had sucked all energy out of me. I was literally cold, despite of warm weather. And than it came to my mind mind: I can either continue to walk down this path, cry myself to sleep, be angry on whole world, give up to my negative emotions and see where it will take me. Or I can start to change something right now. There are only two ways: up and down. And so I decided to go up. The most urgent change seemed obvious: no more porn. I honestly don’t know how it have happened but in few minutes I just stopped to feel frustration, sad and anger and became highly motivated to do something about my life. And now it’s 96 days later. {tl;dr ends here}

But those 96 days were not easy, that’s for sure. Another thing that I’m sure of is that it is only the beginning. I’m not going to say “I made it, it’s over” because it would probably throw me back into old habits. In fact, I don’t want to fap ever again. I don’t want to become one of those guys who after 200+ days of nofap comes back to this site and posts report on how he relapsed, this vision is really terrifying to me.

For those of you, who want some advices on how to succeed in 90 days challenge, I can say this:

• If you find yourself (and you will after about two or three weeks, trust me) daydreaming about doing some “pornish” stuff and thinking about using escorts because “well, it’s not porn, is it?”. Just try as hard as you can to ignore this thoughts and under no circumstances take your temporary fascination with escorts any further. At first turning off this scenes in your mind will be nearly impossible but after some practice it will go away.
• (Most important on this list) DON’T STOP ON NOFAP. It’s not just about breaking with PMO, it’s about self improvement. As I wrote before you can only climb up or slide down, you won’t stay in one place. If all you do is not fapping, initial strike of motivation and confidence will eventually end. And in case of ex porn addict worse mood means stronger urges. You need to take some further actions. Start some hobby, do some sports. I, for example, went to gym and started doing yoga. And it helped. Before, urges kept getting stronger and stronger, but since I started doing sports they are almost non-existent.
• Having a job or virtually any commitment that takes a lot of your time is also a good idea. If you think you have to much of free time at your hand, do something about it. And don’t do it two months since now. Do it now. Get busy.
• If you fail, try again. There are those famous words spoken by Yoda: “Do or do not, there is no try”. And this, my lads, is the most bullshit sentence in popculture. Doing anything comes from constant trying and failing. Every honest man who achieved anything in his life will tell you this. Don’t get angry with yourself after relapsing. As I said, worse mood means stronger urges. Just analyse why did you fail and try again.
• Just in case stay away not only from porn but generally from any kind of “exciting” pictures. My most painful relapse started from checking out some neat artworks on DeviantArt. “Somehow” it escalated to BDSM. Maybe restraining yourself even from watching some innocent cosplay from comicons seems to be overzealous. Well, in case of someone who didn’t spend dozens of hours staring at another kind of cosplay it would be, but remember that we are a bit special people here and we have to give our brains some time to start working like brains of sane people. So play it safe, at least through first few months.

Finally, I would like to share what all this nofap business did for me so far:

• I’ve just admitted to bunch of unknown guys that I’ve been fapping for years, so I guess I started to put far too much trust in my anonymity in web. If I’ll ever run for president in my country this post will destroy me.
• It didn’t magically fix my life nor did I experienced some superpowers (well, I stopped to fell completely unattractive in presence of women, but it’s hardly a superpower). But by doing this challenge I learned how to overcome my whims and how to be strong and devoted to my goals. Which, I think, is a first step to fixing my life. I would even risk stating that maybe PMO has actually a bright side: it is opportunity for us to exercise our will. Year ago I would never stick to any work out routine for even few days and I would never say “no” to soda. Now I’m keeping it up for a month and on top of all I’m eating rather healthy. Some time ago I tried to drink a can of Coca-Cola, but I couldn’t. It doesn’t even taste me any more.
• I’m not frustrated any more. And this is something huge for me. I started to focus more on my life than comparing myself to others. I didn’t get laid just because I broke up with porn. I didn’t become some life and soul of the party. But now I’m just ok with it and don’t consider myself worse than rest of society just because I don’t get along so well with other people. Day after day I’m less blinded by seeking approval of others and more focused on just doing my stuff. Of course I would lie if I said that pursuit of women isn’t a part of what motivates me to all this self improvement stuff, but with time other “ingredients” are becoming more important.
• I realized that “happiness is inside us”. I mean, I’ve heard this phrase numerous times before. In fact it’s so common and worn out that usually it’s not taken seriously any more. But it is very true. Happiness comes from what we think of ourselves and if we agree with our actions. I’m not a very spiritual guy (in fact I’m atheist and materialist) but I think there is more to being happy than just spikes of dopamine. No one will convince me that you can achieve feeling even close to pure joy of self-integrity from eating, drinking, fucking, being acclaimed by others, having a shitload of money or any other external sources.

Even more finally: why “better times”? Virgil once said: “Better times perhaps await us who are now wretched”. I was wretched and now better times have dawn for me. Hence the title. And I wish those better times to you all.