No PMO War XLIII

Appreciate you sharing, glad to hear from you. I personally see the way your brain goes all over the place as a sign of the healing process - reverting the "dumbing down" that we've received for years. I have watched internet porn since I was 8, I'm in my 20's now so there's a lot of damage. The challenge here, which you are succeeding in, is to not let it get to you. It's what separates the men from the boys.

Me? I've stayed clean for a while now, probably 30 days but I lost count. I am a bit dissatisfied because I essentially replaced my problems in lust with other problems (reels, dumb videos, games, etc) but I won't beat myself up about it. Just a little progress here, a little progress there. I'm happy that I am not where I used to be.

Thanks for sharing your stories guys, good to hear progress from people and yeah even when things feel tough, what matters is that the positives are still all there 😁

I feel like I’m on a roll right now, but still taking it a day at a time. This year has been simultaneously mentally tough and also one of the best in recent memory. But I’ve struggled to quit both PMO and nicotine at the same time. I feel like this time is a turning point though, because I think I’ve managed to finally convince myself there are no benefits to these addictions. But the difficulty has been when I momentarily forget that; the voice in my head suggesting I give in can’t be convinced that it’s bad.

I’m good though, and right now the voice is quiet. I’ve been down this road before and I know it will go away, just staying strong and looking forward to getting a war under my belt with this new account (a statement I did admittedly make a couple of wars ago…!)

Thanks man, good to hear from you too @IAM1776 it’s interesting to hear your issue of ‘replacing addictions’ as it’s definitely something I can relate to and am aware of within my own behaviour. However I’ve been using a slightly different perspective during this war. I think one of my biggest issues with PMO is by believing that this addiction ‘isn’t that bad’ or that it ‘could be worse’. It’s like ‘well some people have drug addictions so their addiction is much worse than mine’, but then I stopped and thought about it. If PMO is ruining my life then it is just as bad as a drug addiction within my own sense of reality and I shouldn’t be trying to make myself feel better about my own addiction by comparing it to someone else’s that could be considered worse than mine. I should treat PMO the exact same way as I would treat a drug addition, it’s just as serious.

I thought about what advice I would give to a drug addict and it would simply be ‘whatever you do don’t take drugs’. You can do anything else you like during the day but just don’t take drugs, then if you succeed your day will have been a success and you get to feel good about yourself. In my opinion it’s all about focusing on what is fucking your life up the most and ensuring that whatever happens during your day that you don’t give into that habit. Once you get that handled then you can start making other adjustments. For now focus solely on the one thing that’s going to offer the biggest overall reward in the quality of your life.

So I would say if a video game is the one thing that’s going to prevent you from relapsing from PMO then for now I would say do it without feeling bad about it. Then if you are successful in abstaining from PMO your day will have been a success and you get to feel good about yourself at the end of it. For me personally I have been allowing myself some junk food even though I want to get in shape. I’m allowing YouTube and Netflix even though I know it’s a waste of time and makes me procrastinate. PMO is the biggest issue in my life right now and I know removing it this will have the biggest effect on the quality of my life, so right now this is my only focus.