Do You Need Help?

(Warning!: long story - though I hope you can learn from it)
As many of you I have both failed and succeeded through this difficult journey. The empty promises and deceiving joy of porn have lured me many times since I first discovered it at age 13. Sadly as many young people (boys especially) I didn't realize how destructive porn really is to your life... Until one day I accidentally stumbled upon NoFap.

It changed my life.

When I started reading about what porn do to us and how seductive it is i almost began to cry. Cry because I had fallen so far from my healthy self into this crippled, broken and hollow version of myself. From a child full of dreams with a strong imagination, a relentless spirit and a soul full of adventure and energy I had grown into a shriveled, unconfident and weak teenager. All because I wanted to pleasure myself in secret to lifeless images and disgusting videos of women that use themselves like trash. In school I couldn't meet peoples eyes or even hold a simple conversation without being filled with doubt about myself. I couldn't stand for myself or others against unjust comments or actions. I was so weak. So frightened.

The people i surrounded myself with, my so called "friends", where like me or worse. We did nothing but fuel this PATHETIC way of life by constantly talking and drooling about girls we had no balls to talk to and which pornstars where hotter. Yet we thought this was how a man should be. A slave to his weak will. I was sometimes masturbating during breaks in the school's bathrooms and sometimes more than once at home.

I had no control of myself. No strength in my body, and my spirit was slowly dying, day after day.

When I got home I felt depressed and hollow. Not because I missed school or the outside world, but because I was now alone with myself, to weak to even bond with my family. Still I didn't realize why I was like this, and I continued to pathetically masturbate because that supposedly made me feel something, and I didn't feel so alone and worthless anymore when I got "rewarded" with dopamine. Like some kind of drug-addict.

Then one day: i click on a link to NoFap.

At once it was like a great blindfold was lifted from my eyes, and I could see! For the first time I knew why I was like this and I felt so ashamed. From a promising young child with a strong heart I was now like a worm, being trampled on day after day by others, and especially myself and that bloody porn I was addicted to every waking minute of my life.

I now had been given a choice: to continue like this and eventually die without doing anything with my life, or I could stand up like a man, say no more of this shit, and grow my spirit back.

And I tried. And I failed. And I tried again. And then I failed again, but now something in me had awoken, some sliver of strength that continued to keep growing over the next few months and I got more and more control over myself. Life became better, my health became better, I started go to the gym and I put on several pounds of muscle on my scrawny body. My confidence grew back and stronger than before and I reclaimed my bonds with my family, as well as new friends. However my battle with the pornography was never over and I fought every day.

Which brings me to today.

I failed again by looking at porn.

I felt disgusted. With myself and with the porn I was watching. In a moment of realization I felt utterly grossed out that I continue to go back to something that has broken me and hurt me so many times that I can no longer count it. I got angry. Very angry. I started to throw things and wrote down furiously on a piece of paper why porn is so disgusting, and how angry I was that I went back to it like a loser on my knees.
Then I took the coldest shower I've ever taken, and in that moment I started laughing, for the water was so cold that I couldn't think of porn or anything else, and in that split moment i felt free and truly alive. It was a wonderful feeling, and so I came to another decision.

I now join NoFap. Not to directly talk more about myself, but to help others. Help you who need a kind word to keep fighting, some though love to snap out of the traps of porn or advice and clarity. I no longer want to seek quick and selfish rewards for myself or focus on myslef. No, the only reward that I now want to be a part of is others success. Love and joy grows stronger when shared, and this community has helped me so much and given me so much hope that I want to give back tenfold.

Amongst my friends I seem to be the one they always come to for advice and help (it's simply the truth, not trying to pat my own shoulder in any way). Involuntarily from my part at first but more actively as of late. We all have a gifts and advising and helping others seems to be my call.

So,
to any of you that read this (thank you for enduring my story): I am here to help you, if you would wish so, in whatever way you need. May it be a need advice or simply support: It would be my pleasure.

I ask for everyone to open up about this healing journey and all it's tribulations; together we can help each other stand tall and free again. Always remember: Porn kills your soul, and many other good things.