Everybody needs SomeBody - thoughts both deep and shallow

Here I am, with you guys, and tomorrow morning it will be my 12th day of freedom.

I still sometimes think about getting back to the old ways, but the very second my little monster comes up with the idea, my own subconscious, my silent protector, comes up with this simple line: “What a wonderful feeling - I’m not a user!”

So I’m nurturing the white wolf, keeping it healthy and ready to fight off the black one, weaker by the day, fainter by the hour…

EDIT 1: thanks to @Lefty101 I think the story need an update and clarification. Even though here I referred to the black an white wolf story, which is way richer than just leaving the black wolf to starve, i know believe it wasn’t the best reference.

You see, in this small part I write here, black wolf is referring only to the addiction we all seem to deal with. And even though I acknowledge, in generality, that the Black Wolf should be nurtured as well, just like the White, here the point is somewhat besides the story…

Maybe better to describe our addiction as a shaggy greedy dark dog that came to the Wolves and pretends to be a part of the pack even though he is not… And if we don’t chase him away instead of feeding him, our Wolves will starve both…

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PMO is NOT a forbidden fruit - when you think of it as such, you’ll find it tempting and end up falling for it.

Why you need to forbid a fruit and set up all the fences and warning signs? Exactly because it is tempting.

I don’t have any blocker whatsoever. Not on my phone, not on my PC, nowhere. I refuse to acknowledge that this is a “forbidden fruit”.

PMO is simply an addiction which I’m glad to quit and I’m seriously happy to be a non-user.

The one thing I’m keeping is this app - a simple reminder of how long I have been a non-user and basically a tool that enables me to track milestones.

Tomorrow morning it will be 16th day for me. Hold your thumbs friends, I want to keep this mindset for as long as humanly possible!

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I sometimes see this funny line around here, “I will never give up!”. Here’s what I think - if you think about it all as a fight, you will fight, indeed, and you will fight each and every day. Battles are characterized by one thing and one thing only - that are sometimes won, and sometimes lost. Be happy for every win, but be prepared - if you have wars, you’ll lose every once in a while.

I prefer to be past it - there’s nothing to fight with, only to leave behind. That’s all… Like the mantra from the Dune.

“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Go past your fear!

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A thought about “triggers” in movies and so on. If that’s too much for you already, stop reading!

There is a problem with our reality, namely over-sexualization of the public space in general, internet’s being an eminent example. Wherever you look, you’ll end up seeing triggers wherever you’ll go. That’s unfortunate, and we need to deal with it in one way or another.

And if you choose to try and avoid triggers as best as you can, that’s great! I’m rooting for you guys, but that’s not my way, and for a reason. You can disagree, but I feel like this is an effort doomed to fail. You’re keeping yourself away from something which is a daily experience for an innumerable number of people. Guess what - for the non-users these may not even be triggers! Sure, I’m not negating the fact of over-sexualization, and I guess many people don’t do it either, but they don’t get triggered.

POTENTIAL TRIGGER ALERT!

TRIGGERS

For me, despite abstaining from viewing P or getting any MO for 25 days already, I have watched movies and series for leisure. It happened that some episodes of Counterpart, for instance, contained scenes of sex or naked people, women in particular. Why I’m not counting that as relapse of any sort? Cause that w
as all in context, a part of the story or departing from the particular case of movies, part of life. Therefore I’m not even escaping them. More like putting them into perspective and differentiating. Something is P, another thing is oversexed, yet another an integral part of the plot.

END POTENTIAL TRIGGERS

However, thinking about this particular “Counterpart” series, it features two parallel timelines that departed and differentiated some 20-30 years before the start of the series. The main character meets himself, but different, because of the changes caused by interaction with the other timeline.

And this makes me think… Suppose my timeline split some years ago, when I first fell for PMO, and now I come to know there is another me, who never did fall for it, but just closed the browser and went on with his business.

Suppose I met him, the other me, a very different person from me now. What would be be like? Better in what ways? What could I learn from him? Maybe, despite years of addiction and sickness, I could teach him something as well?

Yet another me was created 25 days ago, and he didn’t decide to install Rewire and didn’t go into no PMO. How much more miserable is he right now? What can be learn from me already?

So, guys, remember - there was a potential you, who never started, but also a potential you who still is knee-deep into this shit, maybe deeper. Think about your timeline fluctuating between these two - it’s up to you closer to which you’ll stay!

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A short rant on accountability.

Look, I get it. It’s great to be accountable to someone. In this community at find exactly this - a whole lot of helpful accountability groups which get us to think that if we fail, we will lose something, a position in a challenge or whatnot.

But think about it - if it was about something like drinking acid, you wouldn’t need anybody to hold you accountable. The acid itself would do the job on you and your body. Seemingly at least, because drugs don’t work like this at all.

Somehow they work in reverse they take away something only long after they are gone from your body and give it back when they are back. PMO is similar - we feel “good” when doing it and suddenly feel shit as soon as we stop.

You have yourself when you relapse, or at least that was me for the longest of times. I held myself accountable and therefore punished myself emotionally. But to be honest, that’s a shit of a solution. Now I’m looking at it differently.

I’m accountable for my no PMO like I’m accountable for my health - I’m doing everything not to loose it and protect my healthy lifestyle (exercise, fruits…), but if I fail at it, I find compassion for myself and pledge to try again.

Or at least that’s what I’m planning to do from now forever - 32 days and counting, and I really don’t feel that I’ll call for the trap again, fall into this swamp in my life’s journey. But even if I do, I’ll pick myself up and carry on, will have learnt new things about myself and my addiction, and will take care of myself.

So, in short - keep yourself accountable before and find compassion and lessons instead punishing yourself afterwards.

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Ur diary is a goldmine of wisdom

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I’m glad you’re finding it to be a goldmine! Please come back as often as you like and if you have some topics your like to know my thoughts about, let me know - in not giving any promises, but I’ll do my best!

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How beautiful:
“What a wonderful feeling - I’m not a user!”
When stating this I feel so grateful, even when I feel kinda empty and disoriented. Not knowing who I am without my addiction…
Day 4☺️

There are different things I’m curious about.
One being ur story with PMO, when u started ur addiction and how u came to realize u want to stop it.
The other one is ur general opinion about sexuality. I just find it very interesting, having read “cupids poisoned arrow” and other books, all with different perspectives…

Thank u and kind regards
Jonas

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Hey Jonas! You just have written when I was thinking about another rant…

The story

Maybe I’ll start with the story, although it is blurred within the veils of time… I’m 25, which makes me quarter-centenarian, I guess, and I’m guessing I have happened to start PMO around 10-11 but that’s a guess - I have never been good at chronologising my life. It went two ways, order irrelevant - I’ve discovered how I work down there by some sheer chance and by the laws of the internet, I stumbled upon ■■■■. Add two and two, you know what’s next. Ever since I’ve been hiding from everyone with that, still doing it and this is pretty much what I’m doing to this day.

Except for this curious community that made me open up a bit, albeit anonymously. But I’ve been trying to kick it rather often, I guess since some point in my junior high or so. The reasons will be obvious when I post the rant I had in my mind earlier.

I bet there’s more to my story, like a few girlfriends I’ve been with and loved, several failures and a terribly broken heart over few last years… But that will come out as I’m on with my irregular posts.

So @Anon4Lulz please, wait for the next one!

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On women, humanity and all that stuff

Left Hand of Darkness

Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the most brilliant writers of fantasy and sci-fi I have ever found. In one of her books she describes a civilisation of planet Zima, made of very peculiar humans. They are hermaphroditic, neither male nor female and only during “mating season” called Kemer their sexuality reveals itself and their function changes based on their current hormonal balance

I’m starting from this to address a certain thing I’ve noted on this forum - some of us have problems with relations with women because of our common disease, the PMO with all its variants. Left Hand of Darkness suggests a solution - try to go beyond our sexuality and see a human being in everyone, be it a man or a woman. See them as partner, friend, enemy, nuisance, but set aside their sex and gender.

My story with women

Let me set this straight - I’m a straight guy and I always was this way. I’ve been attracted to a lot of different women and girls, dated a handful of them… And the interesting detail is, I’ve always enjoyed their company more than among men. Not for the attraction, which happened from time to time, but the overall style of womanity (hang me for this neologism, if you think it inappropriate) suited my social style more.

This being told, you may suspect by this moment I might have had quite a lot of sex, but you’d be mistaken. I didn’t, even with the girls i have dated. Not for the reason I was unable to, as many of us seen to be, but for the mutual respect. Even though desire sometimes made it hard, I’ve always tried to do everything with mutual agreement that we’re okay with taking this it that step.

So how did I make it?

It’s a fair point to ask how did I manage to both have a leading PMO addiction and good relations with women around me, arguably better than with men. How?

In my mind, ■■■■ had been always separated by a thick wall from the reality. I have known and been in contact with too many women to believe it. This somehow seems to have prevented me from social impact of the PMO addiction.

COVID made it worse, unfortunately… My social environment simply vanished into the thin air, not in its entirety, but the offline meetings disappeared almost completely, making me a loner with PMO addiction and my mind slightly degraded as well, unfortunately seeing way more women in screen than in real interactions, therefore partially falling into the trap. But I’m aware of this and as soon as it’s possible, I’ll try to counteract.

Final message

We are all human beings and if you want to get rid of sexualising anybody, dive into relations with men or women, but not the parties or such, but rather as colleagues, friends and so on. That has worked for me my whole life, so maybe it’ll work for you!

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Man your words and thoughts are unique and inspiring. Keep sharing :+1:

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@NeverGiveup420 Many thanks for the kind words! In case you’re curious about anything I have already or haven’t yet written about, just let me know!

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@someBody13 Yes sure I’ll let you know :+1:

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"Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone - Alan Watts

Small potential triggers ahead

Why, when breaking free from the PMO addiction it’s best to throw out of the window all the three letters? How I see it, following the words of Alan Watts, our minds are just like ponds or lakes.

When you come to a lake, it’s sometimes flat like a mirror and you can see your own reflection together with the sky and everything around unperturbed, just another reality confined to the surface of the water.

However, that’s not the usual state - lakes are usually wavy, disturbed by people seeking across them it, rights thrown into them or wind smearing their surfaces. Nevertheless, the surface is rarely calm.

Have you ever tried to smooth out the surface of the lake the way you smooth things like cement or iron it kind clothes? Didn’t work, right? That’s what happens when you introduce any P or M or, for that matter, possibly even O back into your life.

Nevertheless, there are several ways they might crawl back into your life even after you realise their negative impact on “smoothing your water”

You might be swimming in that pond already, doing PMO or even being in a chain of binge watching. You’re somewhere in the middle of the lake and every move of your arms and legs disturbs the surface. The only way to make it silent is to swim to the shore. Sure enough, you’ll be still disturbing the surface, but the direction of important at that moment - even if you’re struggling, you’re headed for the peace of mind soon enough. It requires patience and persistence.

But once you’re in the shore, you might want to see how the lake behaves, if it’s still made of water or maybe just solid glass… So you take a rock and, still standing in the shore, you there it in - watch P, do MO alone, whatever considered kind of edging or such. Before you notice, you start to pick up stones and skip then across the lake, trying out bigger and bigger ones and at some point the lake is just as disturbed as it was when you were swimming. You know you don’t want to sink back to PMO, your doing your best, but after throwing a rock you need to wait again… The magic trick is not keep in your mind you shouldn’t wet your toes.

Finally, you might be standing in the shore and know already that even throwing a single rock will make this beautiful mirror wavy and disordered… But still, gusts of wind come and go, whistle across the land and create creases on your cherished, can lake. I’ve already mentioned this earlier, but we’re living in a society that’s over-sexualized. It may be lingerie store, unexpected advert, beauty in a movie you’re currently watching - you name it. At this point you might be tempted to grab your iron and iron the hell out of this little wavelets traveling in across the mirror… But that’s not the way. Leave them be, just watch them come and fade away. You’ll find out that without your intervention everything goes back to normal.

I’m writing about it just as if it was the Zen road to Satori… And maybe kind of is. It’s not like calming the whole mind, only this small monster that’s been planted in our brains but whatever happened to each of us. There are full description of how the party to Satori winds and bends and my favourite one is Ten Ox-Herding pictures.

I’m mentioning then because the last step is called “Entering the Marketplace with Helping Hands”. There are two ways to understand that, coming from two parts of the title. “Marketplace” can be seen at the bustling, over-sexualized world we’re living in and returning to it means that we don’t have to guard ourselves anymore. I’m not saying that upon reaching this point PMO won’t affect us. The point I’m trying to make is that physical attraction of sex are part of our daily lives. Once we there, physical attraction should be directed towards real people, and we will be comfortable with it.

“…with Helping Hands” is the thing we’re already trying to get here, by helping one another in the way. Nevertheless, once at this stage, all the “mud” of the daily lives, even of those addicted to what we’ve left behind, won’t be this touching so touching to us. We’ll be able to get close to the issue without actually being affected by it.

So that’s that, I guess… Let the waters settle and, maybe one day, you’ll come back with Helping Hands to our Marketplace. I certainly intend on doing so!

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七転び八起き

Fall seven times, get up eight times

It’s one of my all time favourite proverbs, which keeps me going through life. Many people take it to be more or less equivalent to “never give up”, but there’s a twist to it.

Try to look at it at the face value - if you fall down, you get up. One time for one time. That’s resilience we humans seem to have a lot of it. Some of us are like trees, standing tall and strong, resisting the wind up to the moment it breaks us… There’s another way, I’d call it the way of the grass, where the winds blow and we bend, but however strong the wind would be, we get up again.

However, it was only one for one… Yet Japanese say that if you fall down seven times, you get up seven times and an extra one! This makes a difference - you should not only get up but learn and grow stronger!

When you train Aikido, you find out that this is exactly true - you get up every time you fall, but with every fall you learn, you take one extra step towards mastery…

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A short excerpt from Heihō Kadensho

(Self-translated, not from original)

When you want to get rid of a disease in a normal way, you usually start to think about chasing away unnecessary thoughts. Because if this, you get from one dependence into another.

Your desires are a thought - when you want to defeat a disease, you fall into what is called “a crowded thinking”

Even though I’m speaking here about “diseases”, what I mean is an obsession of thinking. A thought about the disease is a thought too. You think about not thinking. In such case, you try to chase thoughts away using other thoughts. When you get rid of them all, you are free from thinking. This way is called “thinking for no-thinking”.

When you think about defeating a disease nested in your thoughts, then the thought about defeat will disappear together with the disease. They will be both gone. (…)

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Today I stand humbled, on something like crossroads of my NoFap journey…

People might say that you can everyone around you, but you can’t fool yourself… And that’s pretty much as far from the truth as possible.

Look closely.

How many times have you been thinking it’s just a small peek and went down the rabbit hole?

I have done this many times before.

How many times have you told yourself it’s just this one last time and went on to do the same thing a day later or two or four or even a week, but you just didn’t stick to it?

I certainly have been there before.

How many times you felt that you’re free from the addiction and yet all the posterior evidence spoke against it?

I did, time and again…

This I stand before you and I say explicitly - I am weak and I feel I might not make it…

The paradox is, precisely the fact that I am weak and I admit it makes me stronger. If I cannot admit my weakness, I cannot correct it and therefore overcome it. Hard as it is, this is the road to becoming better.

Good on, guys! Maybe I’m weak, but despite it I made it to say 63 - and onwards I go, however difficult it is.

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Hey someBody :slight_smile:
Your currently on day 63, are you?
Btw. I’m envious of your writing style, which country are you from?

potential triggers

Summary

I’m sorry to invade your feed like that, but I, ugh…, am very weak. I relapsed multiple times. So I’ve to confess something for you to understand me, which is that I am attracted/pmo’ing to this pictures/fetish called “candid/voyeur porn”. Pictures taken (mostly without consent) of women in public places, beaches, on the streets… mostly clothed. I find this stuff way more attractive than normal porn somehow, since it seemed more “beautiful” (I guess) than real porn?

I’m somewhat repulsed by sex itself, bewilderd of the idea to have it. It’s only in times of great horniness that I really do want it. Maybe I’m ashamed of it, maybe it’s just because I had it only once (with a prostitute at age 19). Maybe I’m just confused.

But here comes the twist: PMO makes me feel less sexual, more in control, more “normal”.
When I indulge in my shameful compulsion and fap for (half) an hour in private (sometimes that it physically hurts lol) I feel oddly satisfied. Finally I can walk the streets without having to look at every butt. I feel great when I can look at beautiful girls the same way I look at not-so-attractive ones.
About 2-3 days this effect fades and my next round of compulsion begins.

I know that nopmo will eventually make me less luster when I’ll get to a higher streak. I know pmo makes me chemically imbalanced and may strengthen my depression.

I really never wanted to be a user, I feel sorry for myself to have discovered P with age of 11. I’m also very aware that I am responsible for my choices but the options to choose from seem so shitty (or maybe just unclear?)

Well, as you can see, I’m very unclear what this post is about. You seem like someone (srry, somebody) with much knowledge, maybe u’ll have something to say. Or maybe not :slight_smile:

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Hey Anon!

Actually, in on day 67 and counting, even though I may have been tempted by certain things in the meantime - yet I kept myself feel PMO up till now and my honest hope it’s that I’ll keep going until… Well, for much longer.

For this question I have a very safe answer - I’m from Poland, but that you can either believe it not.

Sort of an answer

I decided to keep this in a private message…

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Was really looking forward to reading it :joy:.
You built up the suspense and left it hanging.

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