My background

Hi Fapstronauts. I joined NoFap 3 days ago and I might as well get out my comfort zone and introduce myself. As I mentioned in my first thread, my name is Michael, I'm 23 years old, a senior in college studying geology and geospatial analysis, from Atlanta, GA and I decided to join NoFap because I'm sure like most people on here, I want to overcome my porn addiction so that I can live the life that I want to live and have that feeling of freedom. Other interests of mine include running, cycling, hiking, camping, travelling, hanging out at the beach, space exploration, and basically going on adventures. Now I want to talk about my porn addiction, where it all began and how it has impacted my life. I discovered porn at a very young age, 10 years old. At the time, I didn't think I was doing anything wrong until my parents saw that I was viewing it. So they prevented me from viewing it by putting up an internet filter of what sites I can and can't view. I did not view porn for about 2 years after that. When I transitioned from elementary school to middle school, I struggled with making new friends and interacting with my peers, got picked on a lot for the way I dressed, the way I talked, and the things I was interested in. Basically I was not a typical male preadolescent. I was not into sports or video games, I had a pretty high pitched voice for a 12 year old boy, I was always interacting more with girls than with boys and so people would call me things like "gayfer","faggot", "queer", etc. At the time I didn't even know what those words meant, let alone know if I was gay. As a side note, I am openly gay but more on that later. Overall, I'm sure most people can agree, middle school sucked. When my parents got a new computer, they didn't put an internet filter on it. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but I ended up rediscovering internet porn and noticed the effects it was having on me. Essentially, it was my way of coping with the misery and pressure that I felt from school and my peers. So all throughout middle school, I would view internet porn to take my mind off of school, the bullying, and basically anything negative that was going on in my life. Transition to high school and things get a little better. By the time I was 16, my voice had changed from tenor to baritone, I was getting taller than most of my peers, I joined track and cross country, did choir and musical theatre and so most of them didn't mess with me so much. Despite that, I still struggled to interact well with my peers and make close friends. I tried to interact with this one group of people, but looking back on it, they were anything but true friends. Adding on to that, I was having a hard time performing well academically and figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. So again, I would view porn to cope with the stress, anxiety and depression that came with being a teenager who felt lost, alone and confused. After I graduated from high school, I officially came out as gay and attended a local two year college. After I came out, I was hoping that things would get better for me, that I would meet a guy whom I could form a relationship with, meet new people who I could call real friends, and perform well academically. Essentially, I was hoping for the beginning of a new life. During my first year, I managed to make straight A's, and I got my first job. However, I did not meet a guy or make any new friends because I was still viewing porn due to the stress of college and my job, while still living with my parents and feeling that I was falling behind in life while everyone else was moving on. Once I started my second year of college, classes were becoming more challenging and I was struggling to keep my grades up. I was struggling to do my job because of the stress from school, and I was still feeling lonely and isolated. Again, to cope with all this, I would view internet porn. It was the same cycle going around and around during my first two years of college. After my first two years, I was getting ready to transfer to a four year university. During the summer, before moving out of my parents' house and transferring, I decided to try online dating for the first time. Lo and behold, I ended up meeting a guy who was living in the same area as me, and after meeting with him a few times I started having a crush on him. Me being the extremely shy guy that I am, I never mentioned it to him because I had convinced myself that he was not interested. For the remaining weeks of summer, I was extremely miserable. The feelings of loneliness, isolation and hopelessness were increasing and I would view internet porn almost everyday which made my problems even worse. When I transferred to my four year university, I started thinking about my life from a different perspective. I started thinking about my problems and what I can do about them, what I wanted to achieve while I was still in school, and where I wanted to be after I graduate. That was when i started thinking about how negatively porn has been impacting my life and what I needed to do about it. During my first semester, I would read books and articles on the science of what porn does to people and how it impacts their lives. That was when I realized that I needed to do something about it if I wanted to change and live an incredible life. I would continue reading books and articles and listening to talks about people who felt miserable, lonely, isolated, hopeless and how they were able to become successful and happy in life. During the rest of my first semester, I would set strict rules for myself such as no partying, no staying up later than 10 pm and waking up no later than 6 am everyday, reading a book instead of going on my computer before bed, exercising at least 4-5 days a week, no TV watching, doing all my schoolwork when it was supposed to be done, spending more time outside and above all, no porn viewing. Not surprisingly, it was a challenge especially not viewing porn. There would be times when I would not view porn for a week and then I would view it for a few days and then abstain for about a week or two and so on and so on. When the second semester came around, I managed to abstain from porn for almost 5 months. During that time, I was still exercising and staying active, keeping my grades up and even doing some meditation. As a result of this, I started feeling more confident in myself and eventually made new friends who I still spend time with to this day. During the summer after my third year of college, I ended up moving back in with my parents to take classes as a transient student at the two year college I had previously attended. With the knowledge that I had gained during my first year away from home, I continued exercising, meditating and keeping my grades up. Despite all of this, I still had not developed a close relationship with a guy and I was still a virgin. So I ended up trying online dating again with a new iPhone I had gotten by creating a profile on Tinder. Eventually, I heard about Grindr, and created a profile on it for the first time without knowing what to expect. After a few days on that app, I started receiving messages from guys who wanted to meet up. I ended up talking to this one guy who was living close to me. After a few days of chatting, we decided to meet up for coffee. After we finished our coffee, he invited me over to his place and I'm pretty sure people can guess the rest. Hoping that this could potentially be the start of something closer than a friendship, I could not be more wrong. After realizing what I had gotten myself into, I started having those feelings of loneliness and depression again. I would then begin to think to myself how stupid I was for going on Grindr and expecting to find a relationship on there. Sure enough, I end up deleting my profile after a few weeks. For the remaining weeks of summer, after finishing my classes, I was extremely bored. Feeling lonely, depressed, and isolated just made it even worse for me. I wasn't working out as often as I had been before, I got into a really serious argument with a friend that resulted in her blocking me on social media and not talking to me. Finally, just like before, to cope with all of this, I ended up viewing porn again and did so for the rest of the summer. Once summer ended, I moved back to my university town hoping things would get better for me. That was not the case for me at all. I moved into a new apartment with shitty roommates, I received a new job as a research assistant and was enrolled in 15 credit hours. All of this combined was extremely stressful. Even though I had managed to make new friends, there were still times when I felt lonely and depressed. Stupidly, I would go back on Grindr and hook up with random strangers hoping that it would relieve some of the stress I was feeling. Then I would delete my profile saying "I'm never going on there again". While I wasn't on Grindr, I would view porn and when I wasn't viewing porn, I would go back on Grindr and hookup with random strangers. It was basically a vicious cycle going around and around pretty much throughout my entire fourth year of college. After I had started my final year of college, I decided to challenge myself again by abstaining from porn and Grindr. The way I did it was by keeping a journal and recording all the days I had not viewed porn or went on Grindr. I managed to go 2 months without viewing porn or going on Grindr. I decided to try online dating again by creating a new Tinder profile, hoping that maybe by interacting with other guys without hooking up, I would be able to keep my mind off of porn. I ended up talking to this guy I matched with for a week. He would constantly flirt with me by calling me cute, cutie, hot stuff and things like that. Me being the naive and gullible guy that I am, stupidly, I would flirt back and call him cute and handsome and blah blah blah. We both decide to meet up for lunch after talking for about a week. So we meet up, go out for lunch and then we go back to his place. And just like before, it was another random hookup. What made this one different from the others was I had a crush on him. So what I would do is I would continue to abstain from porn for the rest of the semester and think to myself "Maybe this isn't the case. I just need to be patient. I don't know what's going on inside his head." I was wrong. Once I saw that he was with another guy, I fell into complete despair. I ended up blocking him on all social media, deleting his number, hoping it would make the pain go away. I felt a little better but I was still struggling to cope with the feeling of rejection. I'm sure you can guess what I'm about to say next. I turned to porn to help cope with the pain. Now that I am in my last semester of college, I have not been on Grindr or hooked up with anyone for months due to thoughts like "What's the point?" "It's just going to be the same as before." "You're insane if you think something different will happen when you know in the back of your head, it's going to be the exact same experience.". There are still periods when I avoid porn but then there will be times when I go back and view it and then abstain from it again. The same vicious cycle going around and around. Then two weeks ago, after viewing porn, I all of a sudden had a severe mental breakdown. I started thinking "No matter how hard I try, I may be able to abstain from porn temporarily but it will eventually find its way back to me". After thinking that to myself, for the first time in my life, I contemplated suicide. That was the first time I had ever thought about taking my own life. Words cannot describe how terrifying it was thinking that I had contemplated on killing myself. Afterward, I started thinking"Ok. You managed to abstain from porn for quite a while in the past. Your life was improving, you were making new friends, you were becoming more successful, and you were having more feelings of happiness and optimism. You've done it once and you can do it again! And this time, you can do it permanently!". So since then, I have not watched any porn. I still masturbated but then I listened to a Ted Talk called "The Great Porn Experiment" by Gary Wilson. That was when I heard about NoFap and that is how I ended up deciding to create a NoFap account. I know that this is a really long bio and it turned out to be a lot longer than I expected it to be. Essentially, the moral of this story is, porn has had an extremely negative impact on my life. Viewing porn has prevented me from developing good communication skills especially with guys, it has caused me to experience major depression leading me to thoughts of suicide, I feel like I am my own prisoner, and that I am incapable of taking control of my life. Now that I am about to graduate from college and go out into the real world, who knows how much worse things will get for me if I continue to view porn? I feel as if I have wasted a huge chunk of my life on something that I could have prevented years ago. There are so many things I want to do with my life. Like everyone else, I have my dreams, my goals and my ambitions. But I know that if I continue the way I am, I will never achieve any of them. I can't be in denial anymore and I can't afford to think things like "Well there are many guys who view porn and they don't seem to have any trouble." or anything related to that. I hope that by joining NoFap, this could truly be the start of a new life for me. As mentioned before, I have gone three days without viewing porn or masturbating and I am already having these pornographic thoughts, images and memories just screaming at me. I can already tell that this is going to be a long, emotional, and difficult process. But I hope that by joining NoFap, I will be able to go through this process by talking to other people who have had similar experiences to mine and how they got through them. Again, I know this is a long read but I thank anyone who has taken the time to read it. To end it, I would like to say that I look forward to talking to other people on here who may have had a similar experience to mine, how they were able to overcome it, and how it has changed their lives. Even if your experience is completely different, I still would love to read about it. Thank you!

 

Haha thanks! I'll keep that in mind for future threads. So just to update, I'm on day 6 of abstaining from porn and masturbation. It's been a busy week but am hanging in there.