I’m starting this on day 20 of my current streak, this will be my last streak because I’m never relapsing again. I’m 26 years old, turning 27 this summer. I’ve been very bad socially for a very long time, never until recently did I connect my anxieties to porn usage, which I started using at the age of 11. I don’t use social media, and until recently barely had any capability to initiate talk to strangers, or control my emotions under any stress for that matter. NoFap is truly an amazing thing, I’ve been at this for over a year now, with my longest streak being 68 days, and I’ve never been able to be so consistent at work, so sharp mentally, and able to brush off unimportant nuisances with ease.
The thing is though, something inside of me has had trouble letting go of porn, even though I know it doesn’t do me any good. So, 20 days ago, I relapse again. I barely made it 2 days that time and I was so mad. I was mad at myself for not having control, and for turning my back on the Lord with my behavior. I knew I needed help, anger is a powerful emotion, but it always dies away so I would need something stronger than it, a determination, and I had to take steps to prove to my deeper less conscious functions that this is serious. So, I downloaded BlockerX and found another community similar to this one but with the added feature of blocking porn content, and on that community someone shared a resource that I’ve found invaluable, easypeasymethod.org.
I read the whole book and truly think God put that in front of me to help me with some things I was thinking about in a self defeating way. Now, I decided to start keeping a journal here to keep myself accountable and focused on my goals. So, I’ll be posting updates here nightly. Maybe only every couple nights sometimes, depending on what I actually feel like writing about, I don’t want to monologue too much but I think it’ll help me stay focused on my goal for the time being.
God bless, have a good night.
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Day 22, yesterday I picked up some trash around my neighborhood for about an hour, I felt kind of embarrassed at first because people probably thought I had to do community service as a punishment of some sort but when I was done I felt extremely satisfied, looking down the road and knowing it was my doing that made it look decent, I will definitely be doing that again next week. Today I hit the gym and work, I’m pretty tired as I write this, I’m going to meditate and go to bed.
Stay on your grind comrades
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Day 1, feeling a bit better than yesterday, although I slept poorly last night. I’ve hit a plateau in my workouts so after today I’m just gonna do yoga and meditation for the next week. It’s cold out where I am, I like the cold. Yesterday at work my short term memory was very bad, today will be different.
End of day 1, yeah I’m right back at it! Picked up more trash around my block before heading to work today, and work went very well too. I am practicing actively rejecting thoughts of pmo, though tbh the first days are the easiest days… I will use this reprieve to create the habits that will help me withstand temptation!
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Day 2, Sunday is my favorite day of the week, I feel a relaxation in the air; A happiness infused into me as I breathe coming from the whole atmosphere. I think it’s because the general populous has worship and community on their mind more than other days of the week, but honestly I don’t know why it is, I just know that I like it. I hope ya’ll have a great day!
Day 3, woke up early today to get extra time in at school, the teacher wasn’t there and the substitute let me use a booth anyway which was great. Been having quite a few urges today already, I blame it on lack of sleep from getting up early. I’m gonna take a power nap, meditate, and cold shower to help wake up right now.
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Day 5, I think it’s from lack of exercise that I’m so darn depressed right now. I need to take a break though because for the past 2 weeks my progress has stagnated so, Saturday I’ll start up again. I’m seeing some family I haven’t seen since the lockdowns began today, which is exciting.
I’ve been thinking more about my relapse, and past relapses, I think they’re not so much failures when looking at the grand scheme of things. What I mean is, if I didn’t do nofap at all, I would be masturbating every night, for the past year and a half without exception basically (and all time before that until age 11, 15 years ago). I would feel awful and not know why, my emotions would always rule my decisions, my memory would be terrible, and I would blame it on the other drugs like weed and alcohol out of ignorance (though they probably played a part also). I’ve gone 5 days without masturbating, and before that was 22 days, and I view the act negatively for good reason now because I know it only harms my body and mind. I’m certainly not advocating ending a streak, but I don’t think I can really count the end of a streak as a failure, or an undoing of progress either. That part of my life will always be with me even if it fades out behind the smokescreen of endorphins triggered by relapse, it isn’t really failure as much as it is a trip-up, like if I’m walking down the road and I trip; I just have to pick myself up and get my balance back and keep going, I don’t have to, say, start over from the beginning and of the street and retrace my steps. Well, I do for my streak counter, but not for progress from exercise, or meditation, or studying and socializing, my skills that have come from being dedicated to myself and my newfound sobriety don’t disappear with my streak, and I have nofap to thank for starting me on this journey.
Here’s to another day of sobriety!
Day 6, I’ve been thinking about how I spend my free time every day. I wake up at 10:30am, turn on the PC, brew coffee, drink a glass of water, brush my teeth, load up games until noon when I eat breakfast, play more games until 1:30-2pm when I normally either work out or meditate, shower, start lunch, eat lunch between 3:15-3:45, got to work at 4, come home and read or play more video games. Most of this stuff is good but I need to seriously reduce the amount of time I play video games, and potentially wake up earlier. Here’s some quick math, if I spend 3 hours (this is a conservative estimate) playing games every day, that’s 21 hours a week, 84 hours a month, 1008 hours a year spent doing something that doesn’t translate to anything valuable outside of the bubble of the game. If I even allocated 1 of those hours to learning from the various sources available online, I could reap huge benefits in an area I focused my time into.
This is exactly what I’m going to do, play less video games and learn things that will help me be successful.
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My routine is the same as yours. We need to change and learn things that will help us be successfull, how you said.
I hope we leave this unproductivity!
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April 21st 2021,
I’m on day 4 now. Man, it hurts to fall down, though I can’t help that it feels good to get back up again. I’ve set some deadlines for myself, this week I am to wake up at 9:30 am every day. Then, starting Tuesday, I will wake up at 9:00 am, the following tuesday after 8:30 am, and so on until my final time of 8 am. Then, I will have more time in the day to do good things, my previous schedule had me waking up at 10:30am, and on workdays I feel overwhelmed by everything before work and am up too late at night doing nothing after work so I need to make changes.
I’m going to stop talking about what day of my streak I’m on in these posts from now on, I feel like putting attention on how many days I’m at every time I write here is contributing to my falling. I will however, mention any relapses the next time I post after them (If there are any more, I’m in it to win it I swear) because I don’t want to get myself off the hook on screwing up if I do. It’s like that Macklemore & Ryan Lewis song about relapsing on alcohol, I can’t remember the name but it gets me every time. Well I’ve written enough for one night, good night Kings.
-April 27th 2021-
Thing’s are going well, I woke up early and got extra time at school, came home and watched videos on proper welding form for overhead welding, and worked out before going back to school, unfortunately I ate fast food twice today because of the lack of time to prepare a meal from overindulging in working out. Tomorrow, and every day of the week leading up to next Monday, I will wake up at 9am as per my plan to approach a new wake up time of 8am.
I’ve started a mental exercise that has helped with any urges I’ve been getting. Step one is becoming conscious of the urge and the thoughts associated with it, these thoughts are my addiction voice. My AV comes in many forms as there are many different stimuli that my AV might crave, but mainly porn right? So let’s say I have a thought like “look up pics of cute brunettes on google, it’ll be fine” I become conscious of the thought (usually because of the feeling associated with it) and I identify that as my AV. So the next step is to summon my avatar for the AV into my mind’s eye, I picture a fat, balding version of myself sitting in front of my computer with tissues around, and have him say that dumb sh*t again, so I can tell him personally to f**k right off. It’s a lot of fun, and it immediately shows results because I begin by separating the thought from myself and attaching it to an undesirable version of myself I’d happily want to avoid; This avatar serves as an easy and wordless way to remember the consequences for giving in to my AV.
-May 3rd 2021-
Waking up at 9am has been going pretty well this last week, I’m tempted to skip waking up at 8:30 and just go straight for 8 but I don’t wanna mess up and back-track so I’ll stick to my plans. I have 1 class tonight and 1 class next Monday night to complete an overhead stick weld following D1.1 procedure or I fail the class but I’m confident, I just barely failed an attempt this morning, and after 2 more attempts I just get a grade, and as long as that grade is at least high D I should pass the class anyway hehe.
I’ve been working out 4 times a week. Mainly push ups, pull ups, and squats. Although, I want to do more varieties of calisthenics, it’s difficult to balance that with eating and working… Well, that’s mainly why I’m making moves to go to bed earlier, more daylight for more time for activities. I go to work in the middle of the day into the early hours of when many are already getting into bed, one day I’d like to join them… Hopefully, I can get a job where I can operate from 5am to 3pm.
-May 10th 2021-
Trigger warning: content of this post may trigger some people!!
Summary
I relapsed 3 days ago, this journey is so challenging, and there are triggers all over the internet making it difficult to stay away when you get a taste. I realized something though, the effect of looking up porn is exactly like the onset of a powerful drug. I was very conscious of myself as I searched this time, and I noticed just from thumbnails my brain was clouded with a sensation similar to how even when you first taste alcohol, or inhale the ganja, you have an affect. I also now realize a main cause for my relapsing is stress.
The day I relapsed, I had just got off the phone with my dentist’s assistant, who had cancelled my appointment even though I called to confirm it a few days prior and made up a BS excuse as to why it was my fault. I didn’t put 2 and 2 together that day but today, I have my last day at school and am very stressed about that and want very badly to look at porn right now. The toughest part about it is that even in recognizing the stress as a cause, I still want to do it. Although, I feel a bit better getting this out of my head now.
I will not give up, I am not meant to die an addict, I am meant to live free. So are you.
-May 14th 2021-
So I’m back on day 1 today, I wish this were easier but progress is progress. I’m satisfied that I got through the week finishing my workout/meditations every day despite flooding my brain with dopamine on Wednesday. Now, I’m an empty shell of what I can be, slowly gaining back what I’ve lost. It’s an interesting trade though; Near infinite clips to choose from, some much grosser than others, all completely free. Next thing you know, you’ve released, and all the time you put into it is made useless, any feeling of pleasure replaced with sobriety and the awareness of something missing. It’s not a bad deal if you don’t have any aspirations, although if you want to do something worthwhile it’ll only ever get in your way.
At least it’s freaking nice outside! LET’S GET THIS W
-May 15th 2021-
Today was nothing but work from noon to 10:40 at night and it was pretty cool. Tomorrow morning is the Lord’s day baby! I’m not the lord so I have to work but it’s still a good day because it symbolizes the task at hand being completed and just relaxing to appreciate the creation (on a scale much larger than anything human because it’s literally God making the entire universe and the planet for us). I wish my teeth would stop hurting though 
Tomorrow will be a whole new day, more opportunities, more work, more chances to win.
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-May 22nd 2021-
Getting ready for work right now, I tried doing narrow pushups this week and it didn’t go great, exercise is a journey though, not a destination. On Monday I’m switching my routine up, I’m trying to balance performance based progress with bodily strength progress through calisthenics and yoga, so:
-Monday I’ll do Pushups and leg raises,
-Tuesday yoga,
-Wednesday bridges,
-Thursday yoga,
-Friday Pull ups and squats,
-Saturday Yoga,
-Sunday rest.
If I don’t have the energy to pull off these basic exercises for 45 minutes out of each day of the week I’m not trying hard enough and will need to focus on my priorities because it isn’t much and it does wonders for energy levels and mindset!
