3 months forward, 1 month back

Submitted by time_for_change on Mon, 2010-03-01 03:13
Community topics: 
masturbation pornography recovery

Four months ago I returned to the site and made yet another commitment to abstain from p/m/f/o... thanks to the support of folks here, this was the time I cracked it and I managed to push through reboot and find myself in a much better place.

After three months of this, I let fantasy start to creep back in which resulted in a slip, but it was a single episode and I got back on track. 15 days later, and fantasies triggered another masturbation. 9 days after that another slip ... 3 days after that another... 1 day after that...

I find it hard to believe I've let this happen, and the worse is that these last couple of incidents have involved porn too. The major hangover effect for me these times has been irritability resulting in me suddenly snapping at those around me - not good.

Abstaining from p/m/f/o for 3 months was a big achievement for me, but I continued to still be compulsive in other areas - over-eating, bingeing on chocolate, drinking way too much caffeine, spending too much time online (not porn, just reading news and blogs for hours at a time), staying up late and not getting enough sleep.... I see myself at a clear fork in the road now, either I tackle all the compulsive behaviours that slow me down and make life harder, or I give up and live a life less than it could be.

I'm taking the first road, and I'm going to make a list. This is my resolve for the month of March, I figure if I can beat a p/m addiction, I should be able to quit chocolate bingeing, etc if I choose to do it:

  • Complete abstinence from p/m/f/o - done this before so it should be easy smiley
  • Make the most of every opportunity for bonding behaviours with my wife.
  • No chocolate - going for chocolate reboot!
  • No coffee, caffeine drinks - just a cup or two of tea a day.
  • Mindful eating - eating when I'm hungry and not when I'm bored/upset/down. Eating healthier too.
  • No alcohol - I don't have much anyway, but when I do it weakens my resolve in other areas.
  • No internet, except for work - I have a big compulsion with this, I turn to it when I'm bored and spend way too long just browsing and reading stuff. It's habitual. It stops me doing all the other things I need to do, enjoy doing... so I'm going for internet reboot too.
  • Go to bed earlier.
  • Meditate daily when possible - this always helps when I take the time to do it.

So I'll spend one month living this way and see if it helps. My internet abstinence includes reuniting too (as much as I love being here), so I'll return in April.

I wish you all well on your respective paths,
time_for_change

Comments

Submitted by Reggie on Mon, 2010-03-01 04:41.

and I wish you well for success in each of them...but in particular for the p/m/o and the alcohol front...personally I have found that the dulling of the consciousness of alcohol does tend to push me towards all the other addictions that I have built over time...so if you can "reboot" on the alcohol and the p/m/o then you should be well on your way to success with the other "smaller" addictions....well this comes from a person whose all time best is 34 days and current record is a measly 3 days...so yeah...take it as you see appropriate! smiley nevertheless good luck and see you soon at reuniting...

Submitted by michael78 on Mon, 2010-03-01 08:18.

m78

Great post. I find that sometimes overindulging for a day or two allows me for longer periods of abstinence from orgasm. In other words, I find when failure occurs, it is best for me to really indulge so that I am completely spent. Then, it appears much easier to go weeks or a month without orgasm.

Your comments made me think of this: "15 days later, and fantasies triggered another masturbation. 9 days after that another slip ... 3 days after that another... 1 day after that..."

Submitted by Reggie on Mon, 2010-03-01 08:56.

Contrarily ..I find that "binge" indulgence actually makes it a lot more difficult for me to get back on track...of course I do end up binging just the same purely because I just cant help myself whenever I crack...I would think that the neurochemistry must be a lot more counter-productive with binge indulgence....but then as they say, to each his own....so maybe that works best for you Michael and maybe thats what you should stick to....
Cheers,
Reggie

Marnia's picture

Submitted by Marnia on Mon, 2010-03-01 09:50.

and good luck! Make sure and let us know if it's easier this time around.

Submitted by Seeker on Mon, 2010-03-01 15:30.

You may not get to read this till you get back. I just want to say thank you for sharing this. It gives me good insight on how to deal with some thoughts of my own. How easy it is to slip back into old ways. What I need to do to avoid slipping back into those myself.

I was just reading this article the other day.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-we-return-to-bad-ha...

I think it has info on your experience. probably a good read for everyone

Wishing you well
Be Safe
James

Submitted by Rockhardington on Mon, 2010-03-01 16:40.

Hope to hear about your insights from this when you come back. Ive always liked your shares and they have helped me a lot. I understand, and I think youre on to something with trying to root out the compulsivity on all fronts. It feels like we need to do that sometimes, especially when we feel things are getting unmanageable. At least you are taking actions and trying to figure out what works, you will only gain in awareness. Sometimes relapse frequencies and recovery are unpredictable. You know its not linear, but its pretty hard to tell or even know which way things are going. I figure, if youre still struggling, youre going in the right direction.

Marnia's picture

Submitted by Marnia on Wed, 2010-03-03 18:55.

You'll find this note I received via PM of interest:

It took me a long time to actually give up orgasm and I had many failures. But that is not my reason for writing. I wanted to pass on something else that I discovered that may be linked to your research. The last binge I had was in December. In January I gave up all stimulants - tea, coffee, chocolate, sugar, starch, bread - and started on a diet of vegetables with some meat and fruit.

At the same time I stopped thinking about sex completely and let myself and my other half just reattach ourselves. It worked a lot easier because we were not on any stimulants and I discovered how much my diet was affected by orgasm and how much I needed to ingest to keep up with the orgasm high. I think your work is amazing, frankly, and I am not surprised that so many others have been influenced by your thinking. [Note from me: I think it's probably the other way around. smiley ]

Your site has completely changed my life as have Saladmaster pans ( I am a former chef) and cleaning out my intestines with a remarkable lady in London called Merlee Harris. Between diet and karezza I am experiencing life and emotions that I thought I would never feel and so quickly. Cleaning out is not easy - just as hard as giving up orgasm - but the benefits are just as substantial.

My wife and I now enjoy a much closer and much more fun relationship which gets better every day. It's like we have just met.

I hope you find this interesting as I am sure that a lot of other people would benefit from trying it alongside your theories as I am sure they go hand in hand. Orgasm starts you on the rollercoaster, and a lot of other stimulants join in afterwards, making life very complicated.

Marnia's picture

Submitted by Marnia on Fri, 2010-03-05 09:52.

just sent me this message:

I'll keep updating you of anything else i discover. i have got my sense of touch back. previously i used to get very jumpy and irritable about touching to the point where i couldn't be touched at all. Amazing.

Submitted by time_for_change on Thu, 2010-03-11 05:21.

I lasted one week. Then I caved on the p/m, which induced enough self-loathing to cave on several other fronts too. I thought I could write the failure-day off and start afresh the next day, but it's actually taken several days to get to that stage.

I caved when my "don't care" brain was on - that good ol' primitive brain running the roost again.

I meditated this morning, simple watching-the-breath meditation where when a thought arises you note it and let it go. This I was able to do, and thoughts of "what's for lunch", "I need to finish some work", etc came and eventually went, but then the thought to p/m arose and it felt like it had physical weight, and it wasn't a question of letting go, but instead *pushing* it from my mind and it felt like trying to push an elephant out of a room. Having the p/m impulse come at a moment of increased awareness like that really made me see how powerful it is.

Just checking my records I see I've masturbated 10 times in the last 40 days... that's starting to look like a habit - I tell you, this masturbation lark could well be addictive smiley

I'm considering at all an experiment... I abstained for 3 months and you'd really have thought I wouldn't have slipped back to frequent compulsive p/m. After all the work it took to break free I'm pretty much back where I started. It's not even that I have extra stress in my life at the moment; there's no good reason to have lapsed like this, but looking back it has been a gradual slip and by the time I'd realised that, it was too late to get out of easily. Just like the metaphorical boiling frog.

Thanks for all the above comments. James, that article was very timely! "an inflated sense of impulse control" describes it exactly.

So I'm back on track again today. And I've started day-counting p/m abstinence again, as a short-term measure I think it really helps me. So Day 1 it is. I'm also going to try hard to stick to the other commitments I made for March, as the PM post from Marnia shows, good diet especially is a help.

Finally, some positive observations from the first week of March... not browsing the internet turned out to feel quite liberating, I hadn't realised how compulsive a habit this had become for me, and how much time I wasted. I think ultimately I need to limit my time, and allow a fixed amount of time per week to look at news/blogs/etc. This will focus me on reading the things of real interest and not randomly trawling through anything and everything. But for the rest of March I'm staying offline (aside from work) to give myself a calmer place to start from. And chocolate, after a few days I was given gift chocolate (which doesn't count!) but instead of gobbling it down, I kept it for a quiet moment and savoured it - an experience so much more pleasant. In the west we have so much access to cheap stimulants that the art of savouring something is getting forgotten.

Take care,
time_for_change

Marnia's picture

Submitted by Marnia on Thu, 2010-03-11 10:56.

learn slowly when it comes to self-control and sex. smiley I made many experiments myself before I really committed to karezza because I had, at last, integrated its benefits.

Every relapse strengthens your resolve not to put yourself through the cycle again, so it's not time wasted.

See you around. Also, when you do have a chance, check out the "wiki" page. It has some good stuff on recovery, which you may have missed in your absences.

*big hug*

PS Enjoy that chocolate!

Submitted by Seeker on Thu, 2010-03-11 14:20.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9675

there is a timer for fire fox. You can add it to firefox and it will display a countdown timer. I am going to give it a try and give myself a set amount of time a day to spend on the internet. I am going to start with 3 hours a day. That is a lot but still a lot less than I use now. We will see how it goes smiley. I need to limit my time on the net.

Submitted by time_for_change on Thu, 2010-03-11 15:59.

That looks just the ticket for keeping track, I'll give it a go when I let myself back online.

time_for_change

Submitted by Cole on Thu, 2010-03-11 13:53.

The one time I did abstain for over a month, when I fell, I fell big time. To put it bluntly, I brushed against in while taking a shower, and it sent vibrant waves of pleasure over my whole body. I did it again, and it did it again. Just very light brushing. I got sucked in, and kept just barely brushing, and only doing that, I reached climax very intensely. I felt bad about breaking the trend, but the feels were so great I couldn't help but binge on them big time.

But what I've learned here is that instead of thinking, "Oh, guess I can't resist," once the binge had run its course I should have not given up. But my image at that point was that *I* was a masturbator. I couldn't not do it, apparently. And at that point, I didn't want to stop. So instead of chalking it up to a "whoops" I gave up.

Now I'll know different when I get into abstinence for the long haul. It sounds like you already know that. smiley

Submitted by Rockhardington on Fri, 2010-03-12 03:46.

"I'm considering at all an experiment... I abstained for 3 months and you'd really have thought I wouldn't have slipped back to frequent compulsive p/m. After all the work it took to break free I'm pretty much back where I started. It's not even that I have extra stress in my life at the moment; there's no good reason to have lapsed like this, but looking back it has been a gradual slip and by the time I'd realised that, it was too late to get out of easily. "

Im pretty much in the same frame of mind after going without p/m/o for a while and finding myself back in the cycle. But I think you are wrong to think that you are back to where you started. During this time away, you did other things and started setting new pathways and habits. I dont think we lose those with some relapse. It took us years to get into the bad patterns that we are trying to break free from. It may take us years to escape. Dont buy that perfectionist thinking that you are back to square one. You KNOW that this recovery is a process and takes unpredictable turns. Relapses are painful, but a lot of times we get too rigid and comfortable in our thinking when we are sober. Most of the times, we are not really sober, we are finding other compulsions to help medicate our pain (like internet). I need to keep reminding myself that recovery is not a destination, but a constant journey.

Thanks for the internet limitation idea. That might not be a bad idea. I get so bored and it keeps me up real late like right now. Compulsions are interesting, they all need to be addressed at the same time or our addiction will just float from one thing to the next. Since its impossible to address all of them at the same time because there can be nearly an infinite amount of addictions our minds can be addicted to. we probably need to figure out the root. Its a little more abstract. We talk about different reasons here about what this might be, but its still pretty elusive to put into practice.

Man, your persistence is proof that you are progressing. 10 times in 40 days? That is your relapse? Thats good, youre tripping, we all are here...thats why we are here!

Submitted by time_for_change on Fri, 2010-03-12 07:33.

You're right, I shouldn't consider it back to where I started as I have a greater understanding of this addiction and of the ways to tackle it. I guess I just feel that I'm about to go through the same amount of work again to reach the calm place that sustained abstinence brings, but time will tell if that's really the case or not.

"recovery is not a destination, but a constant journey"

You're so right with that... I know some methods of treating addiction try to instill the "you'll always be addicted to ......" and I personally think that's too much; but I do think it's useful to keep in mind that falling back into addiction is always possible, so as to be aware when situations are leading that way.

I'm not seeking perfection in abstaining from m/o, but I do want to leave porn behind for good. The problem I seem to have, at least for now, is that m/o eventually leads to porn... maybe one day I'll figure a way out of that one.

Anyways, thanks for the comments, got me thinking in the right direction smiley

time_for_change

Marnia's picture

Submitted by Marnia on Fri, 2010-03-12 09:26.

as much work as the first time. Be optimistic until proven wrong. smiley

Submitted by Cole on Fri, 2010-03-12 13:14.

Apparently you've linked the two so closely together that one leads of necessity to the other, but it doesn't have to.

Here's the deal. It's possible to stay away from porn 100% of the time. It's available, it's out there, but you will have a hard time "accidentally" going to a porn site. The desire may be there, but it is a choice you are making, and one you can say "no" to despite the demands of the body and mind.

But masturbation, that's harder because you always have it with you. You not only have to deal with mental addiction, but some degree of physical addiction when your body is crying out for it, when you touch it for some reason and it sends waves of pleasure over you demanding to be satisfied, that's an additional part of the addiction that makes it harder in some ways to be 100% away from masturbation, especially if you're single and not having sex with anyone.

You can block porn sites, or just decide that you will not, under any circumstances, go to them anymore, and can make it stick if you were committed enough. But opportunities and physical hunger for sex will always be with you to some degree, you can't ever totally get away from it.

So, the point I'm getting at is it seems to me, if you're to be successful at getting away from porn totally, it will mean disconnecting masturbation from porn. It means breaking that cycle.

I don't know how it is with you, but with me, once I'd been masturbating to porn for a while, I would realize I needed to quit because I never felt I could reach orgasm without porn, or if I did, it was a real struggle. So I'd stop watching the porn. The first few days or so, it would feel dead. I wouldn't be able to reach orgasm a good percent of the time, and of course I always wanted to return to the porn to get it. But if I stayed away from it, in a few days the feeling would return, would feel better, actually, than when using porn. Then I'd be happy without the porn.

But eventually in the natural ups and downs of one's body cycle, I would go through a dry spell where the feelings weren't as good. It would be then that I would think, "Oh, I bet since I've been away from porn for so long, it would really help right now!" That thought would end up drawing me back into it again, and I'd start the cycle all over. Initially, it would be several months between porn binges, but as time wore on, those became closer and closer together, until before I stopped the last time, I would only stop for maybe a week before going in again. I was quickly on my way to being totally sucked into it with hardly any pauses.

Anyway, point being, I think it might benefit you to first dissociate the two activities. Downside is that will mean masturbating, but doing so with a firm commitment, and whatever you need to do to not go there, to not watching porn. It means being okay that you don't feel much, and that you don't reach orgasm. It means eventually stopping and going onto something else when it becomes apparent that it ain't happening.

Eventually, doing that, when the feeling returns and you can reach orgasm easily without the porn, you know you've done the first step to breaking the link between the two. You've taught your body that it doesn't need the porn to enjoy sex. Naturally, it can be easy to fall back into it, but if you keep that up without giving up when you do slip up, eventually you will have rewired your brain. So at least when you do abstain from masturbation, when you slip up, you'll only slip up (hopefully) on one of them and not both.

But, I also realize I don't know you that well. You know yourself and whether something like that would work. Yet, I still think in whatever fashion works best for you, that it will be important for you to disassociate the two from each other if for no other reason, I think porn intensifies the dopamine affect artificially, and this producing a bigger crash and cycle.

Just my thoughts, take them of leave them. smiley But I wish you all the success possible. Keep rolling.

Submitted by time_for_change on Fri, 2010-03-12 15:21.

Interesting thoughts, and I hadn't considered that I might need to separate the two... I'm not sure how successful I will be, but I might give it a go. I abstained from the whole lot for 3 months, but actually the path that led me back in was first drifting back into fantasy which then led back to porn. I think I also need to separate masturbation from fantasy too. I've always masturbated with fantasy, long before internet porn came along.

Thanks again,
time_for_change

Marnia's picture

Submitted by Marnia on Fri, 2010-03-12 17:02.

suggested that masturbation with the focus purely on sensual feelings can be helpful...once you're back in balance. As you know, until then, any kind of orgasm cycle can weaken resolve.

Cole's using an entirely different approach (gradual), and posting his progress, which is great. It may be just the thing for some. Time will tell.

Submitted by Cole on Fri, 2010-03-12 20:05.

Ah, I think I either forgot you'd gone three months or missed reading that before.

If you've done three months of abstaining, perhaps what you might consider is to go a month or so to get yourself back in balance, and then run a test/experiment (since we love experimenting around here. smiley)

Plan the time your going to masturbate, or have sex, whichever, and allow yourself to have an orgasm. I think for this masturbating might be easier since you can focus on your feelings. Don't turn on the computer, and maybe do some meditation/relaxation to allow yourself to get in touch with your body's rhythm. Then begin, slowly but methodically to stimulate yourself, but focus only on what you are feeling. Stare at yourself if you have to, but keep your mind on the feelings you are experiencing. If you find yourself slipping into fantasy, stop. Rest for a bit, refocus/relax, and try again.

Even if you don't get to orgasm, doing that could help make a break. If you do have an orgasm, then give it another two-three weeks before you try again. Then do the same thing. And the more you can change up your old patterns, the better. Like, if you tend to masturbate at your desk, don't do it there, especially in front of a computer. Lay on a bed, or go to another room assuming you have privacy.

But if you stop yourself whenever you start fantasizing, eventually you can break the link between those activities. I've been thinking of something of late, that this has reminded me of, so I think I'm going to go make a blog post about it.

But, I think since you are already in the grove with abstinence, it would be best to get yourself back in balance, as Marnia said, before you attempt this. That way you can also judge how differently an orgasm without fantasy/porn affects you than it does with after having been in balance for a while. Should prove an interesting experiment. smiley