Hi there!

Hi there,

I'm cetusguardian. I've been doing a PMO (sort of my first real one, because I've tried before and relapsed by the second hour) challenge for two days now, and it's both easier and much harder than I've thought. I've been addicted to M since I was around 4 years old, and discovered P when I was about 10 or so in the form of a bodice ripper, regularly starting to look for them around 12-14 years old, later transitioning to visual pornography and worse. It's been a decade since then and I recognize pretty much all of the signs of porn addiction stated in the resources, so I think it's time to stop. Perpetual brain fog + depression, especially, = not fun. It was one of the reasons my engagement collapsed, and it's been causing perpetual problems with my work life as well.

I've got a minor public presence where I normally live so I'm keeping relatively anonymous, but I'd like to meet y'all and try my best to stay off P and M for a long period of time. I don't know if I can make it through a full 90 days, but I'm definitely going to do Hard Mode for at least a week, and try to keep extending from there. I'm actually doing Medium Mode but because I'm currently in a country with conservative (and relatively nosy) relatives (that and...well...I'm not the best with getting 'benefits' anyway), I very much doubt I'll be able to go for the casual hookup...so it's effectively Hard Mode. Because I have a bunch of other addictions that I'm trying to stop as well - e.g. smoking, destructive escapist hobbies of reading and video gaming - I'm doing my best to wean myself off everything little by little instead of making grandiose and unfulfillable proclamations about stopping everything at once.

I have a couple of questions:

- The panic button is helpful at certain times but in others it kind of...triggers me more, especially because I occasionally flip to the next 'random' picture and the picture is triggering...or it's way too damn slow and I get really frantic.
-- How do you guys deal with the trigger or with the urges when the panic button doesn't work?

- In my interactions with my close female friends in the past couple of days, I've noticed the effects of the significantly higher testosterone levels leading to me being attracted to girls I've previously only sibling-type / friendly feelings for (no blood relation at all); it's shown through in tone (constant deep register) and word choice and stuff, and it's making both of us highly uncomfortable. While I've explained the situation to them (vaguely) in terms of honest communication, I've never had this problem before so I don't know how to deal with it. I'm assuming it happens really commonly because of the increased testosterone level -
-- So how did you guys deal with this kind of situation with your close friends of the gender that you're attracted to?

 

Thanks!

I've started my thread on the Reboot Logs already. I'm sleeping a bit more regularly than before as well, which is nice too I guess.