What makes some people heal and other fail

To beat addiction, first you need an important reason to stop. Then you need determination, strength, a new lifestyle, and consistency. If any of those criteria's are not met, chances are good that you will fail.

 

Great question.
“The more joyful you are, the less need for pleasure in your life. When you are not joyful there will be desperate activity, and compulsive sexuality is one of these.”

 

I discovered that I didn't want to live a mendacious life any more.
I want to live a truthful and sincere, pure life.

 

All you need is a good why and a simple plan. You can overcome any struggle if you have a good and transcendent enough reason to do so. Mines is if I keep doing what im doing, ill lose my girlfriend for ever, everything I do (or don't do), I do for her.

 

How do you know it's possible?

 

I know you are right.
Because I am one of those people

 

You can do that too.

 

Hello, friend

I have 202 days of continuous abstinence from PMO. I had 16 years of relapses before this streak with various lenths of abstinence from 3 days to 18 months.

I first found recovery from PMO addiction in 2008 when I started attending 12 step meetings. When I was young, it was easier to deny the consequences of my addiction. This addiction took everything from me: my male health, jobs, relationships, careers, money, time, self-respect.

Recovery is possible. Keep coming back. The miracle of healing will happen for you if you keep moving forward. Do not give up. Do not quit until the miracle happens. The key is to be honest with myself about where I am in life today and what is bothering me today.

What works for me today?
1. Prayer and my relationship with God
(To the admins: I am not proselytizing or inviting anyone to join my church. In fact, I did not mention which church I attend. Therefore, I did not break any forum rules by the above statement)
2. Attending 12 step meetings
3. Being a part of a community of men (and women) in recovery
4. Daily practices of yoga, meditation, journaling, etc. (Introspection)
6. Reading, reading, reading every day. (Your brain on porn, books on brain plasticity and psychology, philosophy)
7. NoFap and another recovery forum that I am a part of
8. Moderate physical exercise on a regular basis
9. Attending church and reading scripture.
10. Therapy, EMDR, IFS therapy

I hope you find your path, my friend.

 

You know what I think. Addicts primarily fail because they underestimate the difficulty, and aren’t persistent enough to endure the discomfort necessary to rewire. Some are going to fail because they aren’t educated on best practices for addiction recovery. Some, like myself, become complacent and forget how important abstinence is, and the attraction to the lie, however temporarily, outweighs the desire to remain in the truth.

There’s a guy around here, @Bob_the_Rebuilder , who is going for a 500 day streak. The best he’s done is 465 days. It’s tough, thinking how long he’s fought and not recovered, but he’s had more good days than not. Life doesn’t ever get easy, I don’t think. We always struggle. I think it’s natural for a lot of us, we’re not wired to feel like we won. If we accomplish a goal, we move on to a new challenge. We keep doing that until we find something that gets the better of us.

 

I'm like this too. I'll go 450, 500+ days and one day I'll be in a certain mood and I'll check out a porn site. Just one and done and I'm blissing out. I'll even start to think I'm beyond counters and NF norms. Bwah ha ha!! I rode the tiger... until the next day I realized I got mauled. That night, last night, my spiritual advisor, Ven. You Tube, recommended Chapter 7 of Shantideva's classic The Way of the Bodhisattva, which goes all fire and brimstone on lust. So there I was, lying in shivasana, wearing headphones, getting my ass kicked by a philosopher from a thousand years ago. [1] Coincidentally (?!), @Ubermen has been going through something similar. Not with that heretic Shantideva, though

What do we mean by "failure"? There are many here who consider "success" to be "never again for the rest of one's life". If that's so, we'll only know at the autopsy. In the meantime, with that definition, it's meaningless to talk about "being healed". How would anyone know?

In my book, someone who can go hundreds of days between brief "resets" is a success. That's better than 99.99% clean hours. If porn remains the biggest problem in their life, they're living a pristine life indeed.

There have been several people who have briefly reset at or beyond 500 days and then found it difficult to get back on track. I think this is one of the pernicious things about the counter. We live in a data-driven age. People will use a metric simply because it's available and easy to calculate, even if it drives bad decisions. I could give an example, but while all the software developers will be pounding the table and shouting "d*mn right", everyone else will stop reading. If someone's counter is into the hundreds or even thousands, and they look at a porn site - maybe they even tug the spud. [2] Are they suddenly thrown back to who they were 500 days ago? No. That's ridiculous. More likely, they've learned something from their naughty fifteen minutes and are now more recovered and more healed than ever before. Yay!

Someone's counter going from 500 to zero doesn't mean spit. That's what I would tell @Bob_the_Rebuilder and all the others in a similar situation. The counter doesn't measure "recovery". It doesn't measure "healing". It doesn't measure one's inner life in any way. While the counter can be a useful tool, it can also be a toxic hindrance to getting back on track after a very long streak.

That's my rant.

-EK

[1] I find the traditional Buddhist antidote to lust unpersuasive, although to be fair, I've never gone to a charnel ground to meditate on how formerly hot bodies decay after death. Maybe it is a permanent cure.

[2] Many thanks to @Meshuga for offering this phrase and walking point for it.