Greetings from Italy fellow rebooters! I’ll start off by saying that I quit porn exactly two years ago (started reboot on 01/08/2013) and I feel like sharing my success story with you guys.
A bit of background first: I’m 26 year old and my pornographic ordeal has been a “rollercoaster” with ups and downs. I started to watch soft pornography at the age of 12 that escalated quickly into more extreme pornography when I got into university (age 19). Before that we had a really slow internet connection at home (the infamous 56kbps!!) and I wasn’t able to download nor view porn videos at high speed and that kept my adolescence free from high-speed porn.
I started with normal straight porn and went quickly to more extreme stuff: I used to watch categories of porn that did not match my natural tastes, like transsexuals, gangbangs etc. However, my lowest point has been bestiality, which made me literally feel like shit moments afterwards ejaculating, especially because I’m a biologist and I do love animals but definitely not in that way. In fact I used to download the videos, watch them and then delete them immediately afterwards, just to repeat the same process every time I relapsed into that type of porn.
I said that my pornographic usage has been a “rollercoaster” because during the university years, I alternated almost porn-free periods to bouts of jerking-off to porn multiple times per day. Luckily, during a 8 months porn-free period in the first year of uni I was able to have a successful sexual relationship (ok we never had sex, but still oral sex went great) with a very very beautiful girl (in fact she was a fashion model, apart from being a controlling bi**h) that gave me some confidence afterwards. After breaking up with her I relapsed badly into porn and one night, I got in bed with one of my friends, a nice and cute girl, but couldn’t get it up eventually. I blamed it on the alcohol of course, but in truth I wasn’t feeling any sexual desire towards her and I was scared and baffled on why this was happening. Out of fear, I ceased to date girls altogether and in the two subsequent years my porn consumption started to increase.
Nevertheless, I always had something on my hands to do and never ended up depressing myself too much for this issue, in particular sports kept me well in fit and university gave me some satisfactions so at least I got that going.
In 2012 I was accepted in a foreign university for an exchange year and immediately after my arrival, I unconsciously stopped watching porn due to the immense amount of stuff that I had to do both at uni and in social contexts. At that time I did not know of the existence of YBOP and I did not know anything about withdrawal symptoms, still, they hit me badly enough due to the porn consumption that I had done before departing. In particular I experienced:
- superheadaches (particularly the first week)
- sense of misplacement and that something was wrong (being abroad did not help of course)
- Feeling sluggish all day
- mood instability
But the worst of all was the anxiety. I’m already a mildly anxious person by nature, and during stressful periods I tend to experience bodily symptoms (like IBS) difficult to prevent. Needless to say, quitting porn exacerbated this symptoms adding a sprinkle of insomnia on top of it (it happened that for two weeks I slept two hours per night). All of this contributed to make my first six months abroad a really sh***y period (pun intended).
Of course I went to the doctors and nothing was physically wrong, so I blamed everything on the stress of being abroad and, when I went back to my exchange city, I started concentrating only on uni and sports while taking more time to relax by renouncing to extra activities.
Things got better, but as I did not know that what I was experiencing was due to porn I started relapsing into it, partially to relieve the stress caused by the withdrawal symptoms (ironic, isn’t it?).
Finally, after the end of the exchange year in july 2013 I discovered YBOP and decided immediately to quit porn for good. Quitting per se was not difficult (I’ve never relapsed in these two years nor I’ve had desire to) for me probably because I started watching porn consistently only after adolescence and also because I already had relatively long porn-free periods. Still I masturbated a couple of times during reboot, but I was thinking about my first relationship (the fashion model) and never to porn. Moreover, if I happened to be aroused by thinking about porn, I would not indulge by masturbating, otherwise it would have been basically like relapsing. Tackling the withdrawal symptoms was also easier after knowing their cause, and after six months I also decided to put aside my fears and I started dating a girl that studied at my university.
Before things got too physical, I told her of the porn issue and that I may have not been able to always get it up for her, explaining also that it was not her fault. This is a key point and I strongly suggest you do the same when dating a girl during reboot, as otherwise if it happens that you are not able to do the deed one night, they start blaming themselves (he doesn’t really like me etc). It turned out she was completely supportive and as I was feeling totally relaxed with her, I was also able to finally perform for the first time with her (success!). After that, things got better and I was almost always able to perform, and if I couldn’t, it was mostly because I was already dead-tired for other reasons. In addition, withdrawal symptoms started to fade and I went back to normal level of anxiety, even though the process itself was not linear, with good days followed by a really bad one.
So, my final thoughts on the whole story:
- You WILL recover from PIED, even if you have watched crazy shit like bestiality (which btw now totally disgusts me)
- Withdrawal symptoms can be really nasty, but now you know the cause and in time they’ll fade away.
- Don’t be afraid to date a girl even if you are rebooting, but make sure you tell her the situation and if she really likes you, she’ll definitely be supportive (otherwise she is just a douchebag!).
- Do sports! It will always help, especially when rebooting and try to find new hobbies (for example I discovered chess!)
- 56kbps internet connections have saved the sexual life of many young adults.
Sorry for the long post guys, and feel free to ask any details!
Ciao!
Shinnosuke
LINK – Not like a sex machine, but at least I stay on the scene
BY – Shinnosuke
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