(23) Simon's journey to quit porn and masturbation forever

Diary
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Follow me along on my journey to quit watching porn forever. I have been watching porn now for over 10 years and i finally have enough of it. I also want to stop fapping since it distracts me too much and influences my daily productivity (in a negative way).

I have some other smaller things that i want to implement in my daily routine:
waking up early at 6:30 AM
start my day with some meditation or yoga
Workout every second day
Read some useful books about quitting addictions.

Update: I have finished reading the EasyPeasy book and I am currently applying it’s methods.
EasyPeasy: https://easypeasymethod.org/

Notes and answered questions from the EasyPeasy book:

(Chapter: Introduction)
Q: Do you spend far more time viewing porn than you originally intended?
A: Yes. Basically every single time i say “Only one more video” or “i will scroll down one more time” while searching for “the perfect content”.That can go on for hours.
Q: Are you unsuccessful in efforts to stop or limit your consumption of pornography?
A: I have limited it, but obviously my goal is to stop my consumption. So yes, I am unsuccessful.
Q: Has time spent viewing pornography interfered with or taken precedence over personal or professional commitments, hobbies or relationships in your life?
A: Yes. it keeps me away from working and it takes away time from my actual hobbies or - in all honesty - replaces them (e.g. “What should I do tonight? I could play this game or watch a movie with people. Orrr, I could watch porn instead. That sounds like a great idea.”)
Q: Do you go out of your way to keep your pornography consumption secret (e.g. deleting browser history, lying about viewing porn)?
A: Yes. It happens automatically. The moment I have stopped watching porn for the day, I immediately delete everything related to it. That includes porn videos that i have just downloaded a couple of minutes ago.
Q: Has viewing pornography caused significant problems in intimate relationships?
A: I have only had one relationship with a girlfriend. It never got to an intimate point, because we broke up before. So, I cant really say that pornography has caused significant problems in that regard. I only remember I cut down my porn consumption to a minimum during the time of my relationship.
Q: Do you experience a cycle of arousal and enjoyment before and during pornography consumption, followed by feelings of shame, guilt and remorse after?
A: That exactly resembles how I experience my porn consumption. But I have started to question myself (in the moments of arousal) why I feel aroused and how stupid it is to be aroused by porn.
Q: Do you spend significant amounts of time thinking about pornography, even when not watching?
A: I would say so, but even more so I fantasize about having sexual interactions with people around me (not my family, of course).
Q: Has viewing pornography caused any other negative consequences in your personal or professional life (e.g. missed work poor performance, neglected relationships, financial problems)?
A: It definetely makes me more anxious in social interactions. I dont want that people know I watch porn on regular basis. Every time when I just have finished watching porn, I am scared that people who I am talking to somehow can find out that I watched porn. There are many other consequences besides that. I dont want to write down all of them, but I can give one more example: When I am watching porn I usually dont eat or exercise enough on that day.

(Chapter: The Easy Method)
Q: What is porn doing for me?
A: Honestly, nothing. Nothing, but bad things.
Q: Am I actually enjoying it?
A: Maybe I did when I started watching porn, but now I just watch it, because my body, but not my mind, is aroused. I watch it, because I made it a routine. I feel alienated when I am watching porn.
Q: Do I really need to go through life sabotaging my mind and body?
A: No, life is precious and so am I. I want to be thankful and take the opportunities I am given instead of ruining them by simply destroying myself with porn.

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I will try to make an entry here every single day to give an update on my current situation. I am currently on a 29 day streak of not watching porn. I have masturbated a couple of times though during that time period. My initial goal will be quitting porn, because right now it seems impossible to me to not masturbate at some point.

Update on 25th May: I will count masturbation as a relapse from now on as well.

With that said: Today is the 18th April and this is my daily entry at 7:34 PM. My 6th semester has just started and right now i am adjusting and preparing for it. I only felt small urges in the morning, but other than that, it wasnt hard to keep myself away from porn.

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Daily entry - April 19: I woke up at 7 AM and did my meditation as well as a workout. My urges were pretty minimal and i managed to keep up my concentration for the most part of the day. Pretty satisfied overall with how the day went.

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Daily entry - April 20: I woke up again at 7 AM and did roughly ten minutes of meditation. I usually am very very distracted when listening to lectures, but today i actually was able to keep my focus on the lecture and i had no problems following it. I sometimes had urges, but they went away pretty fast.

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April 21: I am getting more and more productive even though i woke up later today at 7:30 AM. My new routine seems to work pretty well. I meditated, worked out and i also did some stuff for university that wasnt on a live shedule.

And no urges today.

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April 22: i woke up at 6:45 AM and did my meditation. Today was alot less productive than yesterday, but i still managed to do enough for university, so that i can be satisfied with myself. I had very strong urges in the morning, but luckily i was able to fight them off.

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April 23: I woke up at 7:30 AM and did my meditation+workout followed by a lecture. The rest of the day was used for travelling, meeting up with people. It was a good day overall. I havent felt urges at all.

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Keep up the good work bro :fire: I m gonna start quitting porn from today, let s do this

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Awesome for this motivation bro !! @SimonFelix keep doing …

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Thank you for the kind words, everyone!

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April 24: I woke up at 7:30 AM, meditated and then kindof had a lazier day overall, spending time with my family. I still want to do some things for university this weekend, so I will try to make that happen tomorrow!

Urges today have not been there at all. I watched the movie ‘Ex Machina’. I wasnt aware that this movie included nudity, but it didnt seem to trigger me in any capacity which is good to see.

I think i will do a recap post of the week as well on Sunday, just to see what worked for me and what still needs to be improved.

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April 25: I woke up a little bit later at 7:40 AM, but i still managed to meditate and workout. I had no urges again. I was productive in the household and i travelled back home.

Lets to a little recap:

I worked out 4 times this week, an all time record for me. I went to the gym the first time at the start of 2020, but i wasnt always consistent with it. I worked out 3 times fairly often in the past, but i never did 4 times.

I have never meditated before in my life, but man, does it help me! I can only draw positive effects from it.

I also went outside every single day this week. I often went for a walk which helped me regain energy and concentration for the rest of the day.

The only thing i didnt do much was reading a helpful book. I will try to change that in the upcoming week.

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Dail entry on April 26: Today was not a good day, unfortunately. I woke up late at 8 AM and watched some useless videos on youtube until i finally did my meditation. I then found out that failed my latest examen.

I also masturbated for some reason the night before, but atleast i didnt do it while fantasising or watching porn. Just masturbation, which is not considered a relapse to me, because my initial goal will be quitting porn. But i dont think you should never be allowed to masturbate.

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April 27: I still havent recovered from my bad test result. So today i just tried to cope and take some time off to think about things. That means, i actually didnt do a workout nor have i meditated. Is has been rough today. Fortunately, i was able to do my coping with reading a book instead of watching porn which is definitely a good thing to take away from this day.

Tomorrow i will get a vaccination, so working out will be resumed on Friday.

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April 28: I woke up at 7:50 AM and meditated. I talked alot today with people from my shared appartment and i prepared and gathered documents for my vaccination later on the day. The vaccination went well and even though i didnt spend time on university stuff, this day felt alot more productive and better overall than the last 2 days. I also didnt feel urges except a little bit in the morning.

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April 29: I woke up at 7:05 AM with meditation and then got introduced to a project that i wanted to participate in. In short: It’s about plant production. I then bought some important things and went back home at noon. Followed by that i read a novel for quite a long time.

My vaccination from yesterday made me feel pretty exhausted throughout the day, but i am happy that i still did some Important things.

I had no urges. I didnt even think about anything in a sexual context.

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April 30: I woke up a little bit too late today at 8 AM, because i still have some side effects from the vaccination and need some more time to recover. That also means i will have to cancel my workout sessions for this week which is unfortunate. I feel like i can be alot more productive when i am doing something like a workout right when the day starts.

I also feel like if i am busy in the morning it will be alot less likely that i have urges on the day.
I had really strong urges in the morning today which can be fixed by being more productive in the future.

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May 1: i woke up at 9 AM though there was a important reason why i got up late. I meditated and finally managed to do alot more for university than in the last couple of days which i am happy about.

I had a good amount of urges today, but i was able to fight them off.

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May 2: my alarm clock ran out of power, so i woke up late at 8:50 AM. I was reading my novel alot today until i finally got myself to work for university after dinner was over. Obviously not an ideal day in terms of productivity.

I didnt have any any urges, but for some reason i masturbated right after i woke up. I didnt have any sexual thoughts while doing it and i didnt watch pornographic content.

Lets take a look back at this week. Obviously this was not a great week overall due to different things that happened and myself being a little bit too slow to adjust. Still i was able to meditate on almost every day and i made plans for upcoming days before i went to sleep.

My urges have been a little bigger, but i fought them off pretty easily.

I will try to bounce back in the next week and implement the things in my day which i wasnt able to do in this week.

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May 3: Well i am trending to do my bad habits again. I woke up at 8:30 AM and while i at least did my meditation, i missed out on my workout. The rest of the day i was productive enough to do most of the important things.

I didnt have any urges, however. I feel like they will come back soon.

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