Hi everyone. I'm Al, I'm 22, and I've been watching porn regularly for nearly 10 years now. I've signed up to NoFap to finally show some accountability of the problem that has been burdening me for almost half my life, and overcome it once and for all. I was introduced to it at boarding school, and like many young lads was using porn long before I experienced any real sexual experience with a girl. I knew porn was a problem quite early on - I had my first girlfriend aged 16, and was never able to have successful sex with her. I couldn't ever get it up, and when I could, I wouldn't be able to last longer than two or three pumps. This carried on with further relationships - I met more girls over the following years and failed sexually with all of them. When I was 18, I discovered Your Brain on Porn, a fantastic blog that showed me there were other guys out there who were experiencing similar problems. Initially, I was skeptical that my failure in the bedroom was down to my habit of masturbating to porn. I'd use it once a day, everyday, and thought nothing of it. So, to test this theory, I gave it all up for 30 days. After this period, I was finally able to enjoy good sex with a partner. My erections were 100x stronger, I was more in control of my stamina, and I felt a deep hunger in me to seek real sex - it was as if I had a new lease of life! So what went wrong? Complacency. I felt like I'd like I solved my problem, but had totally underestimated how easily I'd slip back into the habit - I sought out porn in certain scenarios without even realising it. This included: - Being bored - Being upset - Being home alone - Late in the night - After a night out drinking When any of the above scenarios were in action, I'd almost go into an unconscious state of mind and get off to porn, and then once it was over it was as if I'd 'woken up' from this trance and think 'what the fuck did I just do?' Then the guilt would start, I'd beat myself up, and promise never to do it again. Then the cycle would repeat itself, and has done for years - I'm sure it sounds familiar to those of you reading this. What I've discovered is that it takes an active mind to overcome the constant triggers we experience day to day. We need to be constantly, constantly aware of the goal we have set out to achieve, so that your mind can't drift away and lose concentration. NoFap is a fantastic way of doing this - a permanent reminder of your history, your values, and the promises you've made to yourself (and to the rest of the NoFap community) right here. So here are my pledges, to both myself and everyone here at NoFap: 1) I will not masturbate again. Girls only from here on out. 2) I will never seek, browse or view porn again. 3) I will keep a regular blog on here and keep you all posted on my progress. This could be anywhere from big updates, to smaller logs for when I'm suffering from a trigger and want to pen down how I'm going to tackle it. Please get in touch, share your stories, and together we will let go of this great burden that has taken up too much of our young lives.
