Al Caporn - The continuing slide into despair by a Porn god.

Whew. It has been a long time nofap. When I first found you I thought I was on my way. Instead I found about "edging" and in doing so my quest to quit porn became the gateway towards an addiction that has consumed an endless amount of time. Time I could have spent being productive. Time with my family. Time to make money. Time to live. Instead I became an addict, never been addicted to anything before, only going to do it and go all in. And I've been all in for years now. I think I tried to quit nearly 3 years ago. And today I came back, the shell of my former self, no longer who I was but a porn junkie rockstar/legend. I am Al Caporn. And Al Caporn must be sentenced to death so that I may live.

But failure is my name. I've failed again and again. I bought the mindful habit, and just like Craig said, I would fail. Because I didn't do the work. I would get motivated once in a while. I saw a sex therapist. I saw another counselor and told her about my addiction. I opened the door up to my wife, begged for her help. She tried. She failed. We failed together and I took her down the road of my inability and eventually I pushed her aside because it hurt both of us too much to watch me fail over and over again. She came this close to divorcing me, having caught me not once but several times in the living room, sneaking away, and in a vulnerable spot where even though I felt like I'd never get caught by my kids, she was right, the risk was too high. And if they ever caught me, meaning if she ever caught me again, she was going to leave me. No questions asked.

Somehow I managed not to screw that up. But now I sit alone, a self-employed half ass who has to find a way to get my life back. I'm here. I'm at your mercy. I know you and you and you are me, were me, I'm not alone.

I need accountability. I need someone to coach me. I need a friend who understands. I need your prayers. I've got some wonderful things in my life, and if I don't free up my hand from my penis then I'll eventually lose my grip on those things that matter to me. And from that I'll never be able to return.

Whew. Powerful stuff. I haven't written honestly in so long I don't know that I even knew how I felt. I ignored it. Killed the pain with the drug. Fed on the pleasure as the ultimate escape. And sadly that escape pulled me from those things that I care most about. I simply can't go on like this. Is there someone, anyone, who can grab my hand and show me how to take a step forward? I don't want to fail for the rest of my life. I can't truly love my family if I can't love myself. And they deserve so much more than I have given then for the last 15 years.

Surely I can do this for them and by doing so do it for me?

 

Thank you. It sounds like our rock bottoms were nearly the same, and perhaps had my wife taken it a little further maybe it would have prompted me at that time to fight harder. Congrats on your one year anniversary. I can't imagine what that must be like. But if I do the math that means you only spent about a month fighting and not winning, which led quickly to fighting and winning. These are great tips. I can relate to so many of them but haven' seen them lined out so succinctly in one place.

My weakness has been follow through. And maybe that's because I have ADHD. Or maybe I have ADHD because I'm a porn addict. Either way, the journaling and writing and doing the "work" work is where I have fallen short in the past and by not doing so I seemingly always left the door open to relapse. I hope I can learn. I have always been a dreamer. And it feels good for the first time in ages to dream again, that I can have my life back. Thank you for your support.

 

Thanks again for your replies. What are my current strategies for combatting the enemy? Well yesterday I told my wife that I had thrown away my Adderal. This was a way of opening back up to her about my plan for re-commitment to the goal she knew was once my goal but the goal that I stopped talking about. She asked why and I told her the truth. At one time I believe adderal might have been helpful as I had been diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago. I eventually found that whatever I set my mind to while on the drug I was all in. This could be a project for work, or more and more of recent, this could be pmo. And by pmo I mean in the extreme. A PMO edging session supplement with amphetamine salts may be the closest thing I've ever known to shooting a powerful narcotic drug into my veins and riding a high for as long as I possibly could. And I became a master at it. I have literally had 6-7 hour sessions, completely wasted days of my life, only to come crashing down afterwards, being in a foul mood when my family got home mainly because I accomplished nothing during the day. So I read # 10. Be willing to sacrifice ANYTHING for a better life - and I decided that for now and for the foreseeable future I was going to have to live without that medication because I was clearly abusing it and it was clearly feeding my addiction in the extreme and thus making me the opposite of productive and thereby it was doing the exact opposite of what it was intended and I did reach the conclusion that there was no way I was going to be able to beat this addiction with something that enhanced the addiction sitting in my medicine cabinet. I kept two pills just in case I really needed them but have no plans of renewing my prescription and hope that the delay that it takes while getting a new prescription is enough time for me to come to my senses and not get one. Please wish me luck as it would be completely naive of me to think this will be easy.

I made an appointment with my therapist again for this Friday after some time and literally every excuse in the book for not doing so as I know when I see her there is some accountability I feel good about this, and I basically have gone from no accountability whatsoever to back to having my wife at least aware that I'm trying to quit again and now my therapist. I even started writing a star on our whiteboard on our fridge for every day that I go PMO free. Today there is one star, and by tomorrow there will be two and I signed up for a ten day challenge that I'll check next. My personal record in 3+ years of trying to quit has been 8 days. Once I've made it a few days i'm going to tell my wife what the stars are for. Yesterday was fairly easy. My son was sick from school and we palled around together so it wasn't an option and there wasn't much in the way of cravings.

Today, this morning, yes it hit me and I fought it. I went for a run. I came home and any other day just like this in the last couple of months would have seen me engaging. I felt the pull. It was very strong. I recently opened a public office for my business and I put 9-5 on the sign, so I'm trying to make what has been a self employment gig of near absolute freedom more like a normal job. That said I'm at work, I have a window and I could pull up porn any minute. I have Quostodio on this machine but I hacked the password long ago and I guess I need to reset it. I also had opendns on here at one time and I found away around that too. These lessons i've learned have taught me that there is almost nothing that can stop me once I go rogue and get that tunnel vision. I even used to frequent an adult arcade that most horribly was on my way home from town. Thank GOD it eventually closed down. As I'm sure many of you know that is a dangerous place to be and I think there was a part of me that told myself as long as I was at home with PMO and not in a shady, seedy place like that I was better off.

I always took the 22 steps above, changed them up a bit to be more ambiguous in case my kids might find it and I sent it to the printer so I can look at it often. I've now logged onto nofap for the second time and I hope and pray I am making a commitment to this, one that I will keep and be successful, and really I've dug myself into a never ending hole with an enormous amount of things on a to-do list that by way of my wasting time has grown and grown to where I shouldn't find myself without something to do for a long time. And by way of these posts I hope I am in essence journaling right here and now.

I look forward to seeing my therapist on Friday and truly look forward to telling her I've made it 4 days which by then I will have. My wife will likely come with me as she just happens to have off that day and we have other things to discuss but this will be part of the discussion and at least for once I'll have something positive to say and i'll mention nofap and my new friends here and their support.

I'll also once again crack into the mindful habit program and hopefully try to do the program as directed for once and hope that helps.

So several things going on at once that were going on 2 days ago. Thanks for the support, I hope this time the spaghetti sticks to the fridge!

 

Thankd rbrt

Thanks Man. My post was pretty stream of thought but I do love to read and enjoy writing and feel that it is something that that I do good. And yes, that last part is a geek writing joke! LOL. But appreciate the kind words!

 

Had my first real trigger today on what I hope will be day 3. Tried to change my game plan and avoid the house for a bit. Man the pull was strong!!! But I've had a lot of crappy things in my life lately, all relative to my own experience of course, and they were mostly out of my control, actually the actions of others that are in the wrong to me or my family. But I do often try to turn the negative into the positive when I can and I realized that these things suck and they aren't really in my control but the one thing that sucks that is is porn addiction. So almost out of spite, hell I'll take whatever gets me there, I just really want to control this through my power of choice as my own actions are 100% my own choice. So I pulled out of it and I believe this day will be a success. So thanks to my new friends here for their support. I'm gonna add another star to my whiteboard today for #3 and my therapist and my wife will both likely be blown away that tomorrow is day #4, and it's the weekend, and my wife is off work Fri, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday so things are looking real good for me making it 7 days and then onto my goal of 10!

 

Without a doubt I'm glad I told my wife. She probably already knew it. In fact she had mentioned it before and I denied it. "Every guy watches porn...remember Chandler and Joey on Friends? It's normal" And she went along with it. Now she knows and I told her last night of my commitment once again. I truly had given up. Didn't think it was possible. But it is, just look at all these guys on here. It's gotta be.