Week 8 - Sep 22, Sun - Streak: 28 days
@staybusymymotto I’m praying man! Don’t lose hope dude, I know that feeling when all the motivation to continue and achieve in life goes down the drain when you are trying to come up from the bottom. Remember that it’s all your brain tricking you into relapsing again, but the reality is all those feelings will leave, and better ones will replace them once you get farther.
Feelings are subject to change, but the path to success doesn’t. You got this man! Stay strong!
As for me, having major urges today, I keep battling myself, I will open up steam to go look at raunchy games, then I will battle myself over clicking on them, then close the app. I want to so bad, but I won’t! I cannot. To throw it all away now, God forbid man, this stuff is freaking ridiculous. Strongest urges for this entire streak!
I think it originated from my stress today over turning in a big project, worried about my grade, and then of course I have a big calculus exam this week. So the stress is getting to me, at least subliminally, so I’m having urges.
But it’s so weird, I can’t pinpoint it, but the urges this time are so strong. It’s not a clear argument this time, it’s more like a feeling of finality. Like it’s making me feel like this is my only option. Maybe like fighting is pointless, or rather it was never my goal. Such a strange feeling, but powerful. And yet, as I expose it, it is losing power.
So I shall continue to try to work it out so that I may counter it’s argument, bare with me because I am experiencing this as I am writing this:
(EDIT AFTER FINISHED WRITING: Sorry if this dialogue is a bit convoluted, it is my exact thoughts as I thought them, writing it down as I worked through them. I am not presenting what the urges are saying, only my responses)
It is the feeling like I should just do it. Drop what I am doing and relapse. It is the necessary action. But truly there is nothing necessary about it. What meaning does it give to me? Yes, it provides pleasure, but where will it take me after the pleasure. After the burst of dopamine. I am not subject to animal instincts, I am human. That makes me strong.
“Really” I ask it, “What can you give me other than 20 seconds of pleasure?”
“Ah, an hour of pleasure, well that’s not much better, is it. Is that all you have?”
“What I mean to say is that I have my entire life ahead of me in this moment, every time I listen to you I lose time. And you may say that it is only this time or I will never want to go back after dealing with you, but I really will want to leave. I have everytime”
" Tell me, will seeing these beautiful women will solve my problems? Or will it only prevent me from finding a women of my own. You see all of your arguments are useless. You offer nothing but false pleasure, false satisfaction, and false fulfillment.
Why would I give up everything I have in the pursuit of emptiness. 28 days! It has taken me all my being to be in this moment, to be where I am. I have wanted to be clean for so long. It will always be a dream if I give up now. My life will never move forward, I’ll be stuck in ice as I watch my friends and family move on and be happy. I will watch as you control my life and take all that I have. My relationships, my youth, my motivation, my confidence, my grades, my future.
Who will I be if I relapse? Who will I be if I turn around again? Who will I be if I sacrifice who I am for what I superficially want?
Will I really be myself? Is that really who I am? Would the real me inside do that? Would “SpecialBird” do that?
He wouldn’t. So who would I be? I can answer that. 5 years in addiction, look where I was. Depressed, weak, emotional, self-seeking, lazy, and moving to progressively weirder porn which was absolutely disgusting. That wasn’t me when I started PMO, that isn’t the true “SpecialBird”.
Now think 10 years down the line. My previous experience tells me that the trend doesn’t get any better. And by 15 years, 20, 25?? That will be a wildly different person. A new person takes over.
We all have that alternative person. We have our true selves, but we have this alternate future self that is a real possibility, someone we wouldn’t even recognize. PMO doesn’t just demand one night of obedience, it wants your entire life.
I can’t become that, but if I relapse tonight, I will become that if decide once again to move a step in that direction, to walk that way. There’s only two people I can be, me or them. And when I make conflicting steps, it tears me apart because I’m not following who I want to be. I am trying to be two separate people.
I can’t do that to myself. I deserve better."
This is my streak, I am going to make it.