Hi all! I'm a reader of the reddit version of this forum since November 2022, when I started my first serious attempt at this, through NNN. I use some app blockers in my phone, and they include reddit, so deactivating my blockers to read this was becoming counter-productive. So here I am! In actual forum format. My Porn-addiction Story (feel free to skip this section) Early ages I'm now thirty years old. I learned about porn at age 12, through some school friends. I was fascinated with it, to say the least. I was always a shy kid, and didn't have much experience with girls, so suddenly having an unrestricted access to naked women and sex was mind-blowing at that age. I wanted to know everything about it. At that time it was mostly watching, occasionally, softcore stuff on TV, which was the only thing I got access too. Internet porn and highschool All of that happened in the early 2000s, as internet was pretty slow and there weren't many websites. When I entered highschool after 2005, everything changed for the worse. Internet sites were all over the place, with free, very explicit stuff, which I had infinite access to. I started watching hours after hours every day, the moment I got home from school. Some years later I started masturbating to it. I now realize how that made me not pursue relationships. How every time I wanted to make progress in life, or process frustrations, I just retorted to porn to cope. My shyness got worse with time. It also impacted my studies a lot. Instead of studying, when I got home I just went to porn, for SO MANY HOURS. It was almost all I could think of, apart from some videogames and some scarce reading. And also, It made a way less interesting person. I had so little to talk about. University and the onlyfans world At some point regular porn just wasn't enough. I realized that I had no connection to it. For many people this ended up in looking for more hardcore porn. In my case, it turned into celebrity porn, onlyfans, hentai over characters I already knew. This all gave me some illusion of connection, of at least knowing the people in the videos. It's terrible to think, in retrospective, how they were able to monetize porn addiction combined with parasocial relationships. I started building both a stash and a mental list of 30+ sites where to get the rarest, nichest videos that were hard to find. At this point, it wasn't even about the videos themselves. It was about finding them. About the novelty. What felt for me as a collector achievement, was actually the most sophisticated capitalist trap: monetizing my need for new stimuli. At this point in my life I got into many activities. I got into a band, went camping a lot, became more social, got involved at many extra-curricular clubs, I got into a relationship... But of course, if you have many activities, plus school, plus porn, you start doing like shit at school. I was still in my 20s, still young, and I was able to power-through my sex life even with porn. Now in my 30s, while I haven't yet reached the point of PIED, and libido is way lower and porn makes it way scarcer, even with me being in a relationship. My NoFap Story Last year, I went through many crises last year about identity, and realizing that I have a very big trouble realizing what I want (also not wanting much) and what I'm feeling (alexithymia). I struggle to keep up at work cause I got a very competitive job and home-office has made it very easy to lose entire days with porn. Last year, in November, I decided to put a stop to this when I realize that I had stop initiating sex with my current girlfriend, who I'm planning on marrying some day. I've been on and off of the 30-day challenge, but the most I've been able to keep it up was 7 days at a time. Some of my breakthroughs I deleted my porn stash and all my accounts in ungodly forums and sites, which helped greatly. I started understanding some of my triggers: Being alone for long periods of time. I tend to relapse way more if I'm working at home office compared to working with my girlfriend. If I'm at the office I don't relapse at all. Waking up with my phone is a big one. I kinda programmed myself to take my phone as the first thing I do every morning, and I always go "browsing the news". I get an instant need of novelty, which in my mind is equal to porn. Going to the toilet with my phone is terrible. 90% of the times it ends with relapsing. Social media is sometimes hard. Instagram, at some point, started BOMBARDING me with sex worker thirst trap reels and that ended up with me going into porn sites or visiting their pages very frequently. Anxiety and stress. When I'm feeling nervous, I need a relief. The worst is when I'm not even consciously aware of my stress, as I retort to porn and not even know why. Some things that helped me greatly to prolong my nofap streaks: Going to the office frequently. Avoid being alone as much as possible. Not having my phone with me when I wake up. I'll soon buy an old-school alarm clock and leave my phone in a different room. Not using my phone AT ALL to relieve stress. I realized that when I stopped using social media as a means to relieve anxiety, I was better able to identify how I was feeling and deal with it (taking a walk, doing exercise, etc). When I reached my phone, I quickly ended up suppressing my consciousness and being way more prone to consume porn. Blocking every single girl on instagram if they have an onlyfans or they do any kind of sex work. I have nothing against them, but I'm the owner of my time and my space. I don't want their reels being suggested in my feed. This helped GREATLY with the instagram slippery slope. Not taking my phone ever to the toilet. To make this better I might as well buy some entertaining stuff for when I'm taking a shit. Maybe I'll have a book or magazine in the toilet. I want to be better. I want to grow and have a healthier relationship. I want to have a married life with kids. I want to be stronger and fitter. I don't want to be the guy that is hiding all the time, that has his mind 60% occupied with stuff that is useless and damaging. I want to be better aware of my feelings. I want to be able to cope with stress and learn instead of going to porn every time I have a small issue. I want a better future. I want to be proud of myself, not ashamed. I want to stop being a slave defined by his urges. I want to become me. The real me. I'm still here. Today is day 0 of a new life. I'll take it more serious than ever. I'll respect my triggers and implement stuff for all of them. From now on, porn is an obstacle I need to go over to start growing as fully as I can.
