500 days porn-free

Here it is, the NoFap counter maximum and incidentally, the arbitrary goal that I’ve set for myself on January 2nd 2017. I suppose I should be hosting a party or something, because when I look back at the path that led me here, it wasn’t exactly straightforward. I’m talking about the addict mind of course, of 25 years of compulsive and destructive use. But I’m also talking about the tortuous paths that we must face when trying to counter those deeply ingrained behaviours.

I’ve made a post on an earlier milestone that pretty much summed up what tools I’ve used, from mindset to mind tricks to exercises etc, so I won’t be repeating this. If you’re interested, you can lookie lookie [HERE].

Those 500 days are a P-free mark. It hasn’t been monk mode at all, nor do I think that this time of my life could’ve harboured such effort. P-free was the max I could do, and I’m grateful that I could do that much.

(For full disclosure, I’ve spent the past 200 days probably M’ing once a week or every 10 days maybe, to nothing that physical sensations – as little fantasy as possible, and definitely no reference to anything related to P I’ve ever watched. I’ve had a girlfriend too, so definitely O’s too)

Where do I stand today regarding P? Well, as a recent experience showed me, I’m still prone to P’s influence. Or more accurately, the hungry P-addict-mind in me isn’t dead and can still rattle my mind suggesting this or that, when specific triggers happen. You know them too: hunger, anxiety, loneliness, tiredness. The famous “HALT”. It’s easy to brush off those faint ideas though, and literally anything makes it go away (something as simple as looking out the window, for example). As opposed to 500 days ago, I don’t feel threatened when I see a sexually charged image, and in some cases, I’ve even been able to enjoy the sheer beauty of the images (ads in the streets, a movie scene etc) without even feeling that tingle which used to say “oh boy, I’m so gonna masturbate to that later on. Wait no, actually let’s get something more exciting”.

An interesting development (that I really wish you to witness by yourselves when the time comes) was the transfer of any kind of PMO urge onto other things. Compulsive running, compulsive gaming, compulsive movie binging, compulsive working, compulsive social networking etc. I think I went through all the possible exaggeration that avoiding P can provide, always to release that tension. With the right kind of look at what’s happening, trying to understand it an observe, you can spot extremely interesting patterns on your own use, thoughts, behaviors. For example, people believe it’s sexual energy that needs to be released through P, well it’s funny how this so-called sexual energy easily shift/merge in something else entirely – What if it wasn’t of sexual nature in the first place? In my experience, the more sexual tension there was during the day (encounters, thoughts, etc) the less I was prone to urges and P influence – it wouldn’t make any sense if P urges were generated by sexual energy then.

When I had those sexually charges encounters (always as a gentleman and very respectfully) those were the bright days. The dark ones, on the contrary, were full of HALT, generators of tension, leading to urges. The tension comes from the underlying fabric of your life – frustration, anger, pain, relationships, money, projects, friends, family, dreams, work, hobbies, whatever else. Pay attention to this and be honest with yourself when observing this happen, the cravings shift from one thing to the other, you'll see it's very weird. If there’s a sufficient source or tension in your life (you’re not monks so there must be), it grows and can break you if it’s not released somewhere else.

Spoiler: Little dive in psychology discourse

I’m studying mental illnesses currently, and a common scientific understanding/theory (even back when psychology wasn’t called that) is that these tensions, whatever their origin, offset the elements of the balanced psyche, resulting in temporary, then permanent “misalignments” which materialize in the different forms of mental illnesses depending on the person’s background/vulnerabilities but most of all initial psychological profile. Two people with the exact same circumstances and tension offset can develop vastly different issues.

Why this tension finds it’s easiest release in P use, is mostly because of the general appeal that sex has ever had over our lives (after all even the cutest young mom says innocent stuff like “hey, we’re on Earth to have babies”) ; let’s not forget the widespread availability ; the growing market which pushes tailor-made products right in front of our eyes ; the relative secrecy in which people use, making it easier that a plain sight activity ; the feeling of doing something natural or at least not extravagant (like ingesting synthetic chemical products in your bloodstream or nose) ; the fact that most males talk about it as a joke, normalizing it. But some other people with different morals and/or culture might find a release in other forms of addictive patterns: gambling, drinking, violence, substances, gaming, …

In truth, we all start that journey thinking it’s P we’re fighting, P and all its evil. Only to realize, after the P influence is gone, that something else took it’s place – a little less potent maybe, because while fighting our P use we’ve fought some of your tension sources. And to be honest that can be a bit discouraging at first. But then it’s time to realize that it’s a real epiphany, a real chance to make deep transformations in our lives and in turn in the ones of people we share it with.

I’m proud to be able to say that I got that far without P. Wouldn’t have imagined that a year and a half ago. And that’s not the end, because of everything you read before. My life is lacerated with the wounds that I inflicted myself with P over those decades: flimsy sex life, tepid relations, distorted women image, fractured self-esteem when realizing all this.

Thanks to my efforts and thanks to NoFap and the community, I’ve set sail for a different continent, where I may what I want and need.

Today I’ll switch my counter to PM-free, because I want to work on the tendency I still have to want to ease the pain with an M. This instant gratification isn’t what I want in my life anymore – well I could use the instant gratification but not the terrible side effects…. – and I’ll set my new goals accordingly. My record was 108 days PMO free a couple of years ago, so there’s no reason I couldn’t do it again. I will though leave O out of the equation, because I want to meet somebody I can have a healthy relationship with, in order to restore a fair image of a woman’s body, persona and intimacy. A recent experience tells me this won’t be easy, and that despite being free from the hobby of watching P, it will be long to restore these things.

Let’s go for 30 / 60 / 90 / 150 /300 / 500.

I wish you all the best in your endeavours and hope that my experience can inspire/help you. Remember, when you get to that objective you’ve set for yourself, there are two things to keep in mind:

• Be proud. You should, because no one else than you was involved in this. You carried it everyday and won. People might have helped, but you alone did it. Wear it like a badge and step on It to…
• Go further. You shouldn’t stop there, resting on your trophy. A thing that kept us being under influence for the complacency of knowing full well in which situation we were but preferring that to trying to get out of it. Until consequences happened. Am I right? So get out there and fight. It’s your life, your only one life.

And to finish this, let’s just dive 2000 years back, with something that’s widely misunderstood, the famous sliced sentence by Roman poet Horace: “Carpe Diem”. We’ve all talked to some hippy who lived by that “Seize the day (and pretty much fuck everything else)”, well it’s not at all what it means in full :

carpe diem, (quam minimum credula postero)

Make use of the day, (put very little trust in the future)​

i.e The future you want is prepared today.

 

Thank you all As i quick read my post again I realize there is little emphasis on how things have changed in the right direction. I guess I wanted to highlight the underlying process that I’ve come to understand.

So just to be totally transparent, what does life look like nowadays compared to what it was 500 days ago?

I’d say there’s a general appreciation of life that, even though I’ve always been aware of the world’s beauty and complexity, is more of a constant now than it was before when it was individual epiphanies. My explanation is that the baseline of enjoyment for the real and simple things has dramatically switched back to normal. Sounds logical too when you come to think about it : if you’re eating 5* restaurants everyday, chances are you hate the food that you can cook yourself : your reference is skewed, stretched and distorted.

On the tension side of things, I’ve talked about how it flipped from one compulsion to the other, but i forgot to highlight that thanks to that newfound energy/focus/drive I started reading and writing again, got back on my guitar, took up solo gearless fitness and running, and started a 5-year study cycle towards a Masters (in psychology). Since the latter has been quite a ride on the first year I’ve put some of the previous improvements on the side for now, but I still consider them as better options to occupy my time and body and mind than watching P.

I wrote here one day that I wanted to get to a point where watching P would look like drinking crude petrol to me : not appealing at all. I think I’m as close as I can be, and when you’re out of P for that kind of timeframe you come to realize that some of the things that keep flashing in your mind are actually very much linked to previous sexual encounters and relations. Which totally helps redirecting the « will » to recreate these situations in real life rather than on a screen.

This point is probably the darkest part of my current state, since I consider thinking about sex too much compared to the levels I’d want to live by. I say it’s a dark side because I still have a fear that indulging in flirting and courting could lead me to places where my sexual needs are « unleashed » and chaser effect. I guess the next step is to challenge that fear and redefine/rediscover the levels of sexuality I can surround myself with and NOT be scared of a PMO relapse.

Thanks for reading, I would gladly read your thoughts about that last situation

All the best to you all, keep up the effort, life is better without PMO because there’s more of YOU in it