Advice from 365+ members

Thank you. He certainly HAS blessed me. AND is leading me down the correct path. Alas, my weakness of the flesh has made the journey difficult. So that key is denial of one's own temptations.

It's amazing how little (none) excuse we have.

 

I'm not quite at 365 days, but I'll be there in 5 days. Hopefully my insight can still help others.

Well, I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to recovery, so I don't know if there really are any "common keys" as you've mentioned. However, I can talk a little bit about my journey and what helped me stay clean personally, and maybe that will resonate with others (I hope so).

I wasn't able to achieve a year of sobriety on my first try. I had really been trying to quit for about four years before that, and I failed a lot. I hadn't found this community yet, and I was barely able to make it a week without using porn.

Ultimately, I had a powerful moment that catalyzed my recovery. Some might call it a "rock bottom" moment. Some people say you need to hit rock bottom in order to really start recovery. I'm not so sure it's necessary, but it certainly helped me. I was hanging out with some friends at my place, and I had forgotten that the hard drive containing all the porn I had been collecting over the years was plugged into my computer. I was showing my friends something on my computer, and they saw some of my porn collection and asked "what was that"? It was so embarrassing for me. It was like my deepest, darkest secret had just been exposed. It was at that moment that I realized I really needed help, and that I needed to kick this addiction at all costs. I started doing some more research, and I eventually found this community. The first thing I did was disclose my situation on these forums and completely deleted all the porn off that hard drive (I now use it for music).

From that point forward, I was taking my recovery really seriously.

The first major hurdle I came across was urges to watch porn. I would go through intense nights where I couldn't seem to sit still, couldn't seem to get comfortable. It seemed like porn was occupying so much of the space inside my mind that it was overwhelming. To deal with urges, I started by simply noticing them and observing them. Whenever I experienced them, I would start to take mental notes about what it felt like and, more importantly, what else was going on in my life. I soon found that there were specific times or regular events (like going to visit my parents, for example) where my urges would almost always surface. That was such a powerful tool to have under my belt. It got to a point where I was no longer surprised by my urges: I started to anticipate them. I could see them coming from a mile away, and that gave me so much power over them. Now, when I know urges are coming, I'm able to identify them for what they are and prevent them from festering by doing something healthy (exercising, meditation, going for a walk, writing, practicing music, working on a personal project, reading a book, or even posting on these forums). I still get urges even after 360 days without porn, but I know how to deal with them at this point, and I know they'll eventually die off if I continue to focus on my recovery.

After I got into the flow of overcoming urges, I realized my next major hurdle: I can't recover from this addiction on my own. I need a support network. I need people who understand what I'm going through and who can offer me insight on my situation and give me a safe place to let everything out. I started disclosing my situation to other people in my life: my closest friends, some of my family members, my girlfriend (that was a big one). I also started seeing a therapist, which has been enormously helpful. I know therapy doesn't work for everyone (and I know it's not accessible to everyone, either), but it really helped me to have a neutral, judgment-free environment where I can talk about literally anything. Regular sessions with my therapist really helped me stay clean.

After I had gotten the hang of dealing with urges and opening up to my support network of other people when I needed help, I came to my next major hurdle: confronting the stuff underneath the porn addiction. Porn addiction was just the tip of the iceberg for me. I didn't just develop an addiction to porn out of the blue. I initially turned to porn to numb some very real, very negative experiences I was going through as a kid. My parents were going through a nasty divorce, my father abused me and my siblings, and I didn't feel like I had any allies in my life. Porn was there for me as a safe space from all of that. As I distanced myself from porn more and more, I started to realize that there was a lot of stuff from those early days that I never really processed in a healthy way. The next step was for me to face the negative experiences from my past (some of which were still lingering around in the present), and to find healthy ways to express my feelings about them and to process them.

Those three hurdles were the biggest challenges I faced on my way to a year of sobriety. Once I learned to deal with those, I started to feel more secure in my recovery. I started to feel like staying clean was more normal than watching porn. I feel a lot better than I've felt in years.

One final piece of advice before I wrap this up: it's really hard. Recovery is not an easy thing to do at all. It has been one of the most difficult things I've ever done. It takes patience, self-acceptance, and respect. Most importantly, it takes time. It takes a lot of time. I've been clean for almost a year and I still know I have a lot of work to do before I can completely cut this addiction out. One year without porn has been a goal of mine for a long time, but now that I'm so close to achieving it I realize that it's actually more of a milestone than a goal. My ultimate goal is to completely recover: to send my addiction into remission. I know I'm not there yet. I'm still an addict. I still have to focus on dealing with urges, reaching out to my support network, and processing my negative experiences and memories.

It's been really hard, but I'm getting better at it every day.

I hope all of that is useful for someone to read.

 

Hard to say, as everyone's body is different.

If you're having trouble with that, my main suggestion is to try doing something else. Go out for a walk, take a cold shower, or read a book. Do something to take your mind off the spot between your legs. You can do this!

 

Danm that hits hard man... you just explain what I'm going through in this reply. Pmo is nothing but lies, wishes and misery.

 

Its true. I also still feel the urges sometimes to watch porn even after 450 days . ( I don't really count the day now). But we will not go down to that road again... Ever.

 

Thank you so much for your post Ridley, you have been very brave, humble and inspiring. I loved to read your story.

 

Thanks. I'm glad it helped you!