What pushed me over the edge: hopefully for good.

Hello friends,

I have been masturbation-free for about 48-ish hours now and am prepared to hopefully go a heck of a lot longer without. Only time will tell but I'm ready to be persistent.

A quick background on me. I was a bit of a late bloomer sexually, I didn't discover masturbation until I was 16 years sold, and didn't work up the courage to discover porn until a couple of years after that. At the time of writing this, I am 22, a senior in my next-to-last semester in college, and straight as far as I am aware. I also have what seems to be a natural fetish for bdsm. I say it's natural because when I was a younger, before I really understood what sex was; I would occasionally tie myself up with blankets when I was alone because it just kind of felt good. Now that I intend to stay off porn/masturbation and am hesitant to actually practice such things, I'm wondering what to do with these feelings, but hope that this will become clearer at a later date.

Anyway, during my last couple years of college especially, I was finding myself less and less content with life and more often depressed. I was also having trouble focusing, and my natural tendency to procrastinate was starting to get out of control. This is still an issue for me. For example: I have a paper draft due in 11 hours and it's 2:30 AM. yay. This frustration with my ability academically hasn't manifested itself in many bad grades, more-so lost sleep; but it has arguably cost me a relationship during which I just felt unsatisfied and pressured and felt like I had to cut it off. I'm over it now and am not willing to blame it completely on pornography but it was definitely a factor.

I had been finding some enjoyment in watching TED talks on youtube and I had been avoiding the couple I had seen on porn and masturbation. I would often give myself the excuse that, "oh I'm stressed by the semester so that explains why I'm masturbating as much as I am", or "it's actually a healthy thing", and I think the notion that watching one of these might give me uncomfortably sound reasons to stop held me back for a while, but just as curiosity broke me into porn, I gave in and watched this.

Not only did this describe the symptoms which I had begun to accept as just the development of my mind. (i.e. depression, attention-deficit), but it differentiated solo-sex from real sex and the health effects involved. It also shows how the physiology of the brain changes and that it can change back. I'm going to try and watch this video every single day. It's pinned on my bookmarks bar. The fact of the matter is that I very highly value order and logic, and the overwhelmingness of the facts is too much for me. I just have to keep experiencing it 'til I have it memorized so I can't trick and tempt myself back into porn.

The final thing that made me really want to take the leap was to see other break-downs in self-control. I'm currently putting on weight and suspect I'm developing an eating disorder, and I have a bit of a history with video games. I see the start of a downward spiral here, and I'm quite eager to avoid it. I'm not too worried about the video games at the moment as I recently had a spree where I didn't play anything for like a week, but once I start to get established with NoFap I'm going to try and cut down on the impulse to shove as much as I possibly can down my gob.

Oh, and I just remembered, the final-final thing.
In the same way that I wouldn't take kindly to a salesman trying to sell me bandages as he was slashing at me with a knife, I became acutely aware of the fact that porn sites are flooded (at least for me) with ads for ED treatments. Those jerks know exactly what they're doing to you and they are happily exploiting us for it. Porn sites, I know I came to you originally but you are total sleezbags.

A culmination of all of this has had me put my foot down, ready to stand against the darkness and temptation. Being 2 days in, I'm already feeling a little tempted, and am bracing myself for some wild withdrawal symptoms once my body realizes I'm not just saving up for one really good orgasm. Look forward for some updates about withdrawal, mental performance, being stressed-the-heck-out, and progress with other addictions sometime in the next week. I'm looking forward to being a part of this community.

Mind-Over-Brain, Spirit-Over Body [gonna make this my motto cause it at least seems cool to me at 3am]

9-Hats out.