I’ve relapsed. The number’s back to where it started. Square one. All my efforts have been wasted… That would have been how the old me would have looked at this. Although, I may not regret today’s mishap, I do still desire to reach a point in my life where I could live life without being hampered by my porn addiction. Still, 23 days has been the best record I had for the recent months which is great. There’s are many major changes that I could attribute to my current success and lack of changes to my recent blunder. As something that I’ve been wanting to write about for a while now, I’m rather surprised that the subject hasn’t come up in what I’ve seen of the daily posts.
In early March 2016, I’ve been diagnosed with depression. Now, I know that I could have posted this to /r/depression but I felt that this post overall has its place much more in /r/pornfree. You could imagine that someone who’s addicted to porn has to deal with the various side effects such as withdrawal symptoms, PIED, low libido among other things but that person might also being porn to escape reality, to bury negative feelings when things go wrong or to procrastinate. Now, add in depression symptoms like anhedonia, excessive feelings of worthlessness or guilt, low energy, insomnia and difficulty to focus, you now have someone who feels like their effort to get better is constantly futile.
Luckily for me, things went from terrible to great although… quite slowly.
To give you a general idea of my past and current life conditions: I went from working full time to gather money for a musical career, to quitting work and focusing on practicing music, failing my auditions and finally to sink deeper into depression… all while living at my parents and isolating myself in my room most of the time. Quitting porn was hell during that time. I could go at most 1 week without it but went back immediately because I felt and thought that it was all I had going for. Or at least that was what my mind told me. I tried what I could to quit porn but I was stuck in a vicious cycle. What it took for me to realize that there’s a problem beyond porn addiction was when I began to feel completely apathetic and started thinking of suicide.
And so, I began taking medication: one for depression and one for insomnia. I followed an ongoing therapy session and tried little by little all the tricks to become less depressed. And it worked. It took a hell lot of time but as a result, 7 months later, I’m much more capable of handling my problems now. Especially, porn addiction.
HOWEVER, the biggest issue with my pills is that they lower libido. It was something that I had to get used to. I might not be fond of it since at multiple times, I tried to check with porn if everything was working down there. I’ll just have to deal with the low sex drive till I’m off the medication.
Although, I relapsed today, it’s not the end of the world because there has been changes and improvements that stayed no matter what happened. Sure, I’ll have a tough time the following week because I just consumed porn but I’m equipped with better tools to look past this fault of mine and keep moving forward. By effectively re-balancing my brain chemistry concerning depression, I’ve removed a MAJOR obstacle that hindered my recovery from porn.
There’s actually quite a few things that being pornfree and besting depression has in common for me:
- Eating, sleeping and exercising well;
- Getting outside often;
- Using the computer constructively as tool for learning and advancing in my career;
- Getting a job to become even more independent;
- Spending time with friends;
- Adopting a realistic and constructive attitude;
- Objectively differentiate between the rational thoughts and excuses;
- Stop pitying myself;
- Take full responsibilities for my actions as well as the problems that I’ve caused or the ones that others caused for me (because their mine now… whether I like it or not);
- Being honest to myself;
- Being an authentic person.
So, now that I’ve become mostly a “normal person” with mainly just a porn addiction since I’m no longer heavily depressed, I still have to make some efforts to really change for the better. I want to want to change even more, to really draw out all the potential I have and to live life to the fullest because I don’t want things to be like a porn addiction, living just for the moment to climax and spending the following hours or days regretting everything and feeling sad. That’s a shitty life. So, I’m going to do everything that I can to prevent the next relapse and to possibly make my latest mistake the last one. The difference between the first time I tried to quit years ago and now is mainly confidence because I’m learning from my mistakes and I’m building upon them.
I’m certainly no expert on the matter but if you ever feel like your underlying issues of porn addiction may have something to do with depression or other mental disorder, getting it treated will increase your success with pornfree. At least, that’s how it is for me.
TL;DR: Depression is my biggest underlying problem that I “solved” and my recovery from porn has been better ever since. Even though I just relapsed, I now have better tools to pick myself up and continue striving to succeed.
LINK – Back to the drawing board. Porn addiction and mental health.
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