I've suffered from PMO addiction throughout my life since teen years with varying levels of severity (12+ hours in a day, a few hours every day / every other day, an hour or two a week, an hour or two a month) I think (hope) I'm in the latter stages of freeing myself from this as I am trending towards longer periods of abstinence from it (1-2 months) and shorter relapses. I have a romantic relationship (long distance but with many months of the year spent together) which has definitely helped. This year I read "Your Brain On Porn" which probably many people here have read but I also found it very helpful, there are lots of solutions/insights I had reached independently over the years but many more things I hadn't learned or considered. One solution/approach that I had thought about but didn't know where to go for is seeing other people's stories to see that I'm not alone in this (and also share my own).. that's why I'm here! === Relapse: Day 0 Yesterday I was at a point of planning to sleep in 20 minutes, just trying to wrap up a couple of things but feeling lethargic and a bit depressed. Earlier in the week I'd seen a flash of a place on the internet to go for softcore images that I hadn't seen before and the thought occurred to me to check out the website. This instantly became 3 hours (resulting in sleeping very late) of manic edging before finally orgasming, with failing to intervene in the beginning resulting in losing control. In the future I need to ensure that I remember to use a technique of either doing a pushup/having a cold shower as soon as I have the first urge in order to break the thought process. Concerningly, yesterdays relapse/reset was even after I had anticipated earlier in the day that I was feeling particularly lethargic and that since I had the night alone there would be a risk of being prone to relapse. This was after approximately 2 months of abstinence An additional tool I'm working on is ensuring daily meditation to strengthen my ability to control my response to urges in the beginning
When thoughts occur to you when you least expect it is the danger point. I've been going ok since I joined here a couple of weeks ago but Ive been feeling very slight urges in the last couple of days so I know that I can't let my guard down or it'll happen again. I too am finding that reading other people's stories on here is really helpful - many of them have experienced the exact same things that I have over the years of my addiction. Stay strong!
Hi there @pandavitality and welcome! Sounds like you've made some real progress already. I've got some rebooting resources at this link for you. Feel free to check them out and see if you can make use of them. https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?threads/attacks-of-opportunity.358094/#post-3766486 Wishing you a successful reboot, hope you find both techniques and the support that will help you. ~Orf