To a Better New Year, 5+10 months

First of all, I want to thank all of you, who have written +6 months success stories here in NoFap, and to the moderators who are keeping this site alive. Always when I have relapsed and spiraled down to the black hole, I have gained new faith and inspiration from your stories. They have contributed greatly to my recovery, giving me hope during dark times. Before this post, I have been only a bystander here, just reading and hearing your stories and seeing that I am not alone and that healing is possible. This is the small thanks I can give to this community that has been here supporting me in my struggle.

I am 29 years old family father and I have a 7-year-old boy and a wife with whom I have been with for 9 years now.


My road to addiction..


Since as young as 4-5 years old, I have been highly sexual person, experimenting and arousing myself like a model example of a Freud’s psychoanalytical and sex-centered developmental theories. I saw P for the first time at my school friends’ place when I was eight and got my first computer to my room probably when I was 9, or something like that. It did not take long until I was watching P pics on the computer, alongside with other disturbing stuff (headless people, dead because of car accidents etc.). I was so confused and full of anxiety and fear because of all that, I am sure, although I was not able to explicate and understand it then.

When I was 10 (closer to 11 by then already), I got my first O because of M in a shower. Although I had tried it already a lot before (without the know-how or physical capability), the first experience was a huge shock, a very confusing and scary indeed, making me pledge that I would never do it again. But, two days went, and I was doing it again. Since that day, MO and, within a year, PMO became part of my daily life, after I came from school. First, pictures from the web and then became the first videos you could buy with a phone call. Things escalated so that I made a huge phone bill by using our home phone, getting my parents to go mad. I lied, told them that I had wanted to buy a skate film from the web, but that "it was a different video than I expected"...

Well, we all know what came after those first videos you could buy... the Phub

Well, I continued the thing on a everyday basis, 3 times a day at worst. And the things that I have seen with my child’s eyes and experienced with my little, undeveloped mind through these websites is something unimaginably dark and evil. And most of my school friends went through exactly the same. I know because we escalated one another by showing each other awful things that had made us scared. We did it in the name of humor and good laughs, but in reality I would just say that we wanted to share our horrible burdens to someone, and our friends were the only ones to whom we were not afraid to tell (because we knew they were going through the same things). But, in general, oh boy, we were alone, we were so alone with that shit, with our parents being at work and struggling with their own life in this messed up society.

My parents knew that I had a problem, I know it, but they did not help. They did not talk about sex to me, and a few times when I was got caught on P, my father was furious at me, but, after a while, nobody talked about it anymore. I was just left alone with my problem, and because of my father’s reaction, I was for a long time too scared to talk about the horrifying things I was seeing everyday from the web. Nobody hinted at me that I may have a problem, and thus I just went on with my everyday life, living as the things I was seeing and doing in my computer were normal.

Well then along came also tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, shrooms, and chemical drugs (in this order) and life was full of scary and confusing things.


.. And the road towards recovery

Of course, what I described above, is only depictions of all the evil that was part of my life. There was also a lot of great things, such as skateboarding, music with good friends and, most importantly, a rising level of spirituality. In addition, despite my parents’ problems, in general, they were loving and took good care of me.

I found a personal faith in Jesus around the age 20s, and God intervened my scary and confusing life during my psychedelic experimentations I did alone at home. Around these times, I found the power of crying. The most transforming and healing experiences for me have been those moments, when I have just cried alone. I have cried because I have understood how alone I have been with all those evil things in my life. The most healing experiences have been those, when I have understood that God loves me despite all the evil I’ve done, despite the fact that I have mistreated myself and others. It was then, when I started to look for the path back home, reading the Bible and strengthening my relation with Jesus.

At first, I followed also others I regarded as great teachers, most importantly Siddharta Gautama, and did buddhist meditation as well. I also got to know Hindu teachings and many other spiritual traditions as well. For a while, at my early 20s, I continued using psychedelics occassionally, because I managed to stop smoking tobacco, when I understood the insanity of that activity during a Trip. Soon, I also understood the harmfulness of alcohol and stopped that as well. I stopped cannabis for a year, but then started again, feeling it gave me a spiritual relation to God (similarly as the Rastafari think).

In the middle of all this, I of course also understood that I was seriously addicted to P. It was the only thing I just were not able to stop, although I understood it was seriously evil. I began trying and trying to stop, and I managed to go without P for a week, maximum two, and then spiraled back to the abyss.

When I was still using weed and held a positive relation to magic shrooms (“I use only organic things, not chemicals”- thinking u know), I met my future wife. She held similar views and we soon got to baby-making. When we got to know about the baby, we both soon became totally sober.

Honesty had become a hugely important value for both of us, which was why I was able to be open to my wife about my P problem. She has always been super supportive towards me and understood me, trying to help in my recovery every way possible. She has been hurt because of my problem, but she also knows that it is a horrible addiction, so she has not been aggressive towards me about it.


Important mile steps in the recovery

So, with the support from my wife, and even more motivated because of the birth of our son, I continued my struggles. There was not a mean I did not try in order to get free from P. I prayed and people prayed for my recovery. My wife hided all laptops and phones during the night (which was the most probable time of relapse for me), but some way I always managed to find a way to get access to the internet. Despite my decision to be completely sober, I also ended up trying to eat shrooms few times after many years in order to handle my addiction on a Trip (did not work). I also returned to weed and tried to think about my problem with that, but it did not settle the problem by itself either. I meditated, fasted, did cold showers, had accountability friends, kept diary, visited NoFap, and created strict programs, diets, and rules to follow.

All these efforts have contributed to my recovery in many ways, I believe, but they were not able to give me longer streaks than a few of 3–4 months ( less than 120 days). I always relapsed again, and after that I would have months long periods of weekly (at worst even every nightly) P usage until I was able to get again a bit longer streaks. Always, when I relapsed, I talked with my wife about it and felt horrible.

The first big breakthrough happened when I heard about the EasyPeasyWay method, developed based on Allen Carr’s methods. It gave me important understandings of how pointless the hole P watching is. I began to realize with my conscious mind and also within the emotional level that there really is not a single thing it gives me, as it only takes away from me those things, I have tried to get from it. With the help of the book, I managed to get a 5-month long streak without longing for P. Nevertheless, slowly things began slowly to slip into wrong direction. I let my mind to wander too loosely, checking out women and stupid news about some women, who try to get attention with their looks. It was a slippery road that gradually let me to relapse once again. I spiraled back for a month to the PMO loop, relapsing every second day, or something like that. Still, I practiced the teachings I learned from the SPAM REMOVED (spam code #001) - REPORT TO MODERATION as best as I could. Then happened the breakthrough that led me to be free from P for 10 months.


The breakthrough that led me to 10 months freedom of P


So, I went to sleep outside into a winter shell, and it was freezing. My friend came with me there, and we took a little of weed, drank hot tee, and then pondered the question of why I was addicted to P and why I had relapsed. There, in the freezing silence of the winter, I managed to talk to my friend all my findings and reasons for why I did something I really did not want to do. It was a great night indeed, and I some way managed to explicate my findings in an important way.

Few nights after the night in the winter shell, I ended up watching P once again. But then, it happened. I calmed myself down and just watched the video (I was sober). I began thinking all those moments when I had been alone with those videos. I thought that little 8,9,10,11,12 year-old-child, who had watched those videos alone and was full of anxiety and fear because he was not able to understand the perplexity of those emotions caused by those videos. And then, I became sad, so sad, for that little innocent child, who had to go through all that alone, no one there to help him understand what was it that he was seeing and why it created so conflicting feelings and emotions. I realized I am still that scared little child and that it will always be part of me. Oh, how much I cried as the video went on, and all the lust washed away with those tears in that moment. I began mourning for all the lost feelings of joy and happiness of that child. I mourned all the terrible things that that child, that was me, I, had to see and process alone. All the happiness and carelessness I have lost from my childhood is lost forever, as I cannot be a child anymore. Maybe this was the reason why I was always coming back to PMO. It was my childish way of coming back to the moment, when something fundamental from my childhood went broken, hoping that at this time I could find some magical thing that could prevent me from getting broken. But now, I understood that it is something that I cannot do, I will just have to accept that what happened. I truly believe that mourning for that little child within you, is crucial part of that process of accepting what happened. It is an important path to recovery.

After crying, the video over and everything, I just simply lost the need to watch P, very much similarly as had happened with tobacco many years earlier. Months and months went without a crave. At first, I did some important precautions that helped me as well, not taking my phone close to the bed at night, for example. But all in all, stopping P watching after that mourning process was effortless and live became so much better without that emotional burden caused by those videos on my shoulders. And so it went, 10 months. During this P free journey, I also stopped smoking weed and I am again totally sober. Adding to this I have started praying and reading the Bible on a every-day basis, and I am now closer to Jesus than ever before. Our sex life with my wife has become also excellent because we haven’t had that awful burden tearing us apart anymore.


Current situation

The 10 months have been beautiful time in my life. Of course, it is not something THAT TRANSFORMS EVERYTHING, but something that increases your quality of life tremendously. Hard depressing emotions and difficult things are an inevitable part of life within these kinds of societies and world we are living in. But the scared, lonely child within me has started to smile, and that brings heavenly joy into my life.

But, again, just as gradually and slowly as the time before, just a few days before the new year P managed to lure its way back to my life. It had been just those small things once again: Christmas, family, and work stress, and checking a bit more those women that use makeup and too tight pants, on the street and in the web. And there it went. At night, I could not sleep and then suddenly the urge hit, strongly, and I watched P for a while, but managed to remember that child within me once again. But, u know the drill; As you go close to those neuropathways within your brain, you will very likely be watching P soon enough. So, I watched again at the same night, again resisted the urge to MO, but two nights after that (a night before the year’s eve), the whole PMO bonanza happened once again. Naturally, I felt horrible because that is what PMO ALWAYS does.

Despite the current setback, it is clear that I have not forgotten my important lessons, and nothing has gone to waste. Computers and phones once again go away from me during the nighttime. The most important thing is that this does not come again a weekly habit (I really am not interested in this anymore, AT ALL!), but, if a new relapse comes, I will try to see P and its effects on me “as they are” as best as I can (similarly as I had done before the 5 months and 10 months streaks).

I had promised myself that when I get this far, I will make this post, so here it is. All tips, emotions, and thoughts this post brings are very welcomed.

May God bless your year 2024!


PS. Read the SPAM REMOVED (spam code #001) - REPORT TO MODERATION!