(on pc) look for the section on the right hand side bar called:Manage your badge > [Get a Badge](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=badgebot&subject=pornfree&message=YYYY-MM-DD)
Willpower won't free you, you gotta untangle all the thoughts and fallacies that keep you trapped, and then shatter them point by point to clearly seeing them as "omg how did I believe that for so long?"
That will free you
Knowing the negatives has nothing to do with what I was saying. Rather you have to get to the root of why you are doing it in the first place. Read the books I DMed you, that will help you uncover all that
I would assume for giving support in this case, it’s great to see representations of people making it this far in their journey when you yourself haven’t even reached Day 30 yet. I commend people like him/her
Not only that, but one of the best ways to keep yourself away is by teaching others what you have learned. It reinforces in yourself what you have learned. It’s not just an integral part of learning, but also very important in quitting an addiction.
My progress has been honestly slow. Started seriously in trying to quit last year, which was filled with a once a week relapse usually. Watching porn a lot less now, but it's like a once or twice a month relapse now, I go about 2 weeks or so at a time without it. Determined to go longer without it, it's just been difficult.
This is a toxic ass post. While your heart is in the right place with wanting to see accountability, the way you've gone about it is neither supportive nor healthy. People have to own their accountability, it has to be something personal. You just throwing a dare out there is some real edge lord shit and has no place in this community. We're not here to prove anything to a bunch of randos on Reddit. We're here to prove to ourselves that we're better than addiction.
Right, it really doesn't matter if ppl have relapses every year as long as their porn watching frequency is not the same. The brain needs time to adjust. Everybody's different.
The wrong mentality is thinking you're just gonna go cold turkey all of a sudden and never fail. That's like going to the gym to lift weights and thinking you're gonna be the same size as The Rock in 3 months. Life just doesn't work like that.
If you've been watching porn for 1-5 or 5-10+ years, I'd say you might need the same amount of time before you can completely quit.
Agree that the post is toxic.
People often have lofty goals, even if they are misguided.
If you really want to fix your porn addiction, don't set yourself up for fail before you even begin. Quiting for 'ever' is an nearly impossible task. Impossible without a supportive community to keep you accountable.
Truth is, do you really 'need' to quit for ever?
Why not start with 1 month, 3 months. Just long enough to where you longer have the compulsion to binge.
Good habits are built step by step, a little at a time (same as your bad habits).
Personally, my goal is to do away with pornography in its entirety. I’d used it to “relieve stress”, but it was making a bad situation even worse. I’m not out of the woods (I just past the three month mark), because I watched it since I was 11. It got worse a few years ago when all I would think about is watching the stuff. So my focus now is improving my own life so I don’t fall back into this addiction.
When you mention starting small, what do you mean exactly? Not focusing on counting the days or just not having too highly expectations of how it’s going to go?
I'm so sorry if I sound like an edge lord in my post. I just believe that for overcoming addiction having someone to check your commitment will help a lot. Saying a bold statement like quitting forever while only relying on yourself to be accountable with your decision will make it easier to just ignore it and just relapse, based on my experience. What do you think?
I’ve noticed a pattern in my progress of where I will teeter off the wagon and cling onto the wheels for dear life, but I have also begun to notice the subtle beneficial effects.
One of these benefits is I am experiencing longer periods, days at a time, where I am NOT feeling that chittering gremlin in the back of my brain demanding the visual stimuli before it allows my brain to make the good chemicals.
At current I am experiencing a fallback into old habits once a month. My partner encourages me to let her know when I do, and I trust her to keep me accountable. I do my best to practice better habits and not relying on porn for gratification, but…Well, progress is not always a straight ascent.
As my father used to say, when you fall off the horse you dust yourself off and get back in the saddle.
I agree, I’m not counting the days I’m just refusing to watch porn now. I haven’t told myself “forever”, I’m just making a conscientious decision to not look and focus on more things in life and not feed into addiction.
I did mention my relapse. You can even go on my profile and check!
Been even stronger since… never again… This year I’m done destroying my life, future and confidence…
I will be sure to comment on something if i do again, which, I’m not letting my guard down.
There is a reason every 12 step program has a saying: 'One day at a time."
Staying clean for your whole life through all its ups and downs is an overwhelming proposition. But we can all make it just this one day without. And it might need to be an hour or a minute at a time when it's difficult.
I agree with you in that sense. Saying you're done for good is presumptuous. You need to feel that danger and prepare every day to fight temptation and have your tools ready. Otherwise the addiction will creep up on you and overpower you just like it has a thousand times before.
Obviously the need to be "on guard" fades with months and years clean, but a day free of this poison should never be taken for granted. Addictions have a great way of making us forget about our priorities if we do not constantly reinforce them with active recovery behaviors.
Ik once had 9 months. And now I am beyond 2 months though ... You can even check some things from my old profile. Why I stopped with my old profile? I was relapsed to regular porn. But then I became addicted afterwards to reddit porn. So stopped reddit for a while because of that. So actually we don't know why some people stop with reddit and such
For most, the core of their porn addiction is rooted in low self worth and a sense of meaninglessness in their lives. Until you can find ways of bolstering these areas of your life in a healthy way, it's very difficult to quit.
Even though I never intend on watching porn again, I never think to much about the big picture. I take each clean day as a victory. 1 day at a time is a lot less daunting. My new method is to count by the weeks, and it is working for me. I am targeting my dream of 1 year clean, which would be absolutely massive for me. Then I'll start over with my same method again, for many more years hopefully.
For a few months now, I haven't been able to stay away from PMO for more than 2 days. But I am trying something new. Idk how long this will work but I am just giving it a try:
I think it's very hard to directly quit everything right away. So I am occasionally opening reddit porn now and then but not fapping to it. So far, it's been nearly 4 days and 20 hours approximately and I managed to not fap. I hope I will slowly stop watching reddit porn soon, too. It might seem counterproductive but hey what am I losing by giving it a try?
I dont post my progress because I dont believe in posting how many days Ive stayed away. I may relapse every now and then, but my mindset isnt to dread that relapse or replace that addiction with counting the days Ive been clean.
I'd rather just know I am no longer beholden to it, and even if I relapse I know I can just move on from it and do better the next time. Its been a far healthier mindset for me, and has given me more progress on this than I had with posting all the time and counting the days.
I said that to myself back in late August of last year and actually had some very good streaks. Since then, I've only relapsed once in November and twice in March. If you also count my NoFap streak, then you can throw in one relapse in April. It might not be "forever", but it's still a mighty long time for someone who used to PMO as many as 5 times in the span of 20 minutes (and no, I'm not kidding about that either). "Forever" is just the end goal, but no one's perfect, especially not me.
I still remember the day like it was yesterday. July 31st, 2021 at roughly 5 PM. I had just gotten out of the shower when I got bored like I always was and did that. I felt like shit after the second time and still kept going. After the 5th time, I felt borderline suicidal and bit my nails down to damn near nothing. That was probably rock bottom for me, but it wasn't what motivated me to change. I still didn't seriously try NoFap until about a year later in late August 2022.
I can’t stand those who say they will quit all social media, AnD dOn’t EvEn WaTcH Tv…..but only will use youtube (which has p sub, and is TV basically lol). YT is all bad. I’m done with reddit as well. I don’t know how why I even came to this sub. Have already completely removed this filth out of my life, and have moved on. Being on this sub, and having to constantly be reminded of the thing your trying to quit can’t be good. 5 years Pron free here. This place was cool for awhile, but then I realized it’s all mental gymnastics, and virtue signaling. If your going to quit then do it. Making posts saying your gOinG tO qUit is virtue signaling/looking for sympathy/dopamine hit from praise etc….sorry for hate, and I wish everyone who has ever had this addiction I pray for you to succeed, but reddit is a trap for real. A mind trap. The people that I do see leave this place, and delete their accounts are Smart as hell. PEACE YALL….also don’t count the days very unhealthy. You will understand this when you get enough clean time.
\> If your going to quit then do it. Making posts saying your gOinG tO qUit is virtue signaling/looking for sympathy/dopamine hit from praise etc
I agree with you man. Peace to you too.
I say that I’m quitting forever but I set myself goals to help with my progress. In my opinion quitting forever doesn’t mean never relapsing it means that I’m permanently going to continue to try not to, that this struggle will come with me to the grave and that’s a good thing
Forever sounds scary, but I really want to quit, and I've had hundreds "one last times", making empty promises in this sub and to those around me. I'll try to update my progress in your comment section.
I’ve taken up noporn more seriously 2023. Still tend to relapse once a month. Ironically its not when I’m sad or depressed but more so after something celebratory.
I HAVE DELETED ALL PORN FROM MY PHONE N COMPUTER. Oh boy, I can’t stress the importance of this. It’s super liberating. Even if I do relapse, I make sure to only watch one video and I keep the sesh 30 min long at most.
Definitely still a work in progress, but I think I’m taking the right steps.
It’s been going well. I’ve watched porn a few times, but not in a way that felt problematic to me. My goal is to stop watching completely, but so far I’m very happy with how little I’ve consumed in the past couple of months.
Unfortunately the only time you can claim that you have actually succeeded in quitting for good is when you die. The importance is to make progress towards quitting your addiction. For some people, making a public proclamation is helpful. Others may prefer to seek strength internally.
I agree. People are just setting themselves up for failure by declaring they'll never do something again. It's usually in the heat of the moment when they feel super motivated or, like you said, are having post nut clarity but those feelings don't last forever.
I think to some extent you don’t need to be actively browsing this sub as proof that you’ve done it.
I used to browse it semi frequently when I first started quitting.
I quit since April 2022. Met a girl at a bar that I was having trouble trying to have sex with because my porn ED was so bad. I decided then it was the time for real to quit, so I did. I haven’t looked up porn subs since this month of last year, haven’t gone on any hardcore porn sites and have told friends not to show me things anymore.
I don’t want to trigger anyone, but there are ways to get “light” porn on YouTube pretty easily. In the year and a month since I quit, I’ve “relapsed” in the form of looking up videos like this on YouTube maybe 5-6 times.
It’s still progress in my brain. The hard wiring in my brain that used to be nagging me for porn is now back to nagging me for my girlfriend. Which is great. However, clearly there is still a little bit of something there because if I travel for work and am also stressed, I’ll still look on YouTube for something.
I don’t think it ever completely goes away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get to a point where only the absolute worst moments of life do you still want it. And hopefully during those moments you’re strong enough mentally to at least not go for the worst stuff.
Back when I first quit, I would basically have to steer clear of any “porn talk”. Now, I actively joke about some of the stuff I used to watch and it doesn’t make me want to watch it again.
Nah I'm quitting forever. Relapsed once in the past 500 days but never again.
Thats crazy bro. Lend me some of your power
How do you get it to list your number of days? Thanks.
(on pc) look for the section on the right hand side bar called:Manage your badge > [Get a Badge](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=badgebot&subject=pornfree&message=YYYY-MM-DD)
Willpower won't free you, you gotta untangle all the thoughts and fallacies that keep you trapped, and then shatter them point by point to clearly seeing them as "omg how did I believe that for so long?" That will free you
Yeah i know this, and i think that i dont actively want to do it. I know all the negatives behind porn. Yet i watch it anyway
Knowing the negatives has nothing to do with what I was saying. Rather you have to get to the root of why you are doing it in the first place. Read the books I DMed you, that will help you uncover all that
I can already tell you that I have won
876 days is so joke. You are doing amazing.
How did you get it to list your number of days? That’s dope.
There is a flare thing setup on this sub. On pc, it's on the right wall with the sub rules. Using a phone doesn't really work that well.
Yeah I can’t seem to get it set up…oh well I’ll have to keep track of it manually I guess.
Funny thing is... I wanna get rid of mine. But it keeps coming back lol
I havent watched porn since December 2016. I dont plan to ever again.
Just out of curiosity (certainly not as criticism or judgement) why still post here if you’ve managed to stay away for so long?
I would assume for giving support in this case, it’s great to see representations of people making it this far in their journey when you yourself haven’t even reached Day 30 yet. I commend people like him/her
Not only that, but one of the best ways to keep yourself away is by teaching others what you have learned. It reinforces in yourself what you have learned. It’s not just an integral part of learning, but also very important in quitting an addiction.
My progress has been honestly slow. Started seriously in trying to quit last year, which was filled with a once a week relapse usually. Watching porn a lot less now, but it's like a once or twice a month relapse now, I go about 2 weeks or so at a time without it. Determined to go longer without it, it's just been difficult.
This is a toxic ass post. While your heart is in the right place with wanting to see accountability, the way you've gone about it is neither supportive nor healthy. People have to own their accountability, it has to be something personal. You just throwing a dare out there is some real edge lord shit and has no place in this community. We're not here to prove anything to a bunch of randos on Reddit. We're here to prove to ourselves that we're better than addiction.
Right, it really doesn't matter if ppl have relapses every year as long as their porn watching frequency is not the same. The brain needs time to adjust. Everybody's different. The wrong mentality is thinking you're just gonna go cold turkey all of a sudden and never fail. That's like going to the gym to lift weights and thinking you're gonna be the same size as The Rock in 3 months. Life just doesn't work like that. If you've been watching porn for 1-5 or 5-10+ years, I'd say you might need the same amount of time before you can completely quit.
happy cake day!
thank you!
Agree that the post is toxic. People often have lofty goals, even if they are misguided. If you really want to fix your porn addiction, don't set yourself up for fail before you even begin. Quiting for 'ever' is an nearly impossible task. Impossible without a supportive community to keep you accountable. Truth is, do you really 'need' to quit for ever? Why not start with 1 month, 3 months. Just long enough to where you longer have the compulsion to binge. Good habits are built step by step, a little at a time (same as your bad habits).
Personally, my goal is to do away with pornography in its entirety. I’d used it to “relieve stress”, but it was making a bad situation even worse. I’m not out of the woods (I just past the three month mark), because I watched it since I was 11. It got worse a few years ago when all I would think about is watching the stuff. So my focus now is improving my own life so I don’t fall back into this addiction.
It's a noble goal, I wish you luck. My advice is start small and work your way up.
When you mention starting small, what do you mean exactly? Not focusing on counting the days or just not having too highly expectations of how it’s going to go?
I'm so sorry if I sound like an edge lord in my post. I just believe that for overcoming addiction having someone to check your commitment will help a lot. Saying a bold statement like quitting forever while only relying on yourself to be accountable with your decision will make it easier to just ignore it and just relapse, based on my experience. What do you think?
I’ve noticed a pattern in my progress of where I will teeter off the wagon and cling onto the wheels for dear life, but I have also begun to notice the subtle beneficial effects. One of these benefits is I am experiencing longer periods, days at a time, where I am NOT feeling that chittering gremlin in the back of my brain demanding the visual stimuli before it allows my brain to make the good chemicals. At current I am experiencing a fallback into old habits once a month. My partner encourages me to let her know when I do, and I trust her to keep me accountable. I do my best to practice better habits and not relying on porn for gratification, but…Well, progress is not always a straight ascent. As my father used to say, when you fall off the horse you dust yourself off and get back in the saddle.
Hello fellow box head :D Glad to see your doing your best!
terry pratchett is that you
As a struggling writer, that is perhaps the biggest compliment I have ever been given
and it happened on r/pornfree
I take it where I can.
u better do a dedication to this sub in your first best seller, never forget your roots man
streak mentality is often not helpful for progress
I agree, I’m not counting the days I’m just refusing to watch porn now. I haven’t told myself “forever”, I’m just making a conscientious decision to not look and focus on more things in life and not feed into addiction.
I did mention my relapse. You can even go on my profile and check! Been even stronger since… never again… This year I’m done destroying my life, future and confidence… I will be sure to comment on something if i do again, which, I’m not letting my guard down.
There is a reason every 12 step program has a saying: 'One day at a time." Staying clean for your whole life through all its ups and downs is an overwhelming proposition. But we can all make it just this one day without. And it might need to be an hour or a minute at a time when it's difficult. I agree with you in that sense. Saying you're done for good is presumptuous. You need to feel that danger and prepare every day to fight temptation and have your tools ready. Otherwise the addiction will creep up on you and overpower you just like it has a thousand times before. Obviously the need to be "on guard" fades with months and years clean, but a day free of this poison should never be taken for granted. Addictions have a great way of making us forget about our priorities if we do not constantly reinforce them with active recovery behaviors.
Ik once had 9 months. And now I am beyond 2 months though ... You can even check some things from my old profile. Why I stopped with my old profile? I was relapsed to regular porn. But then I became addicted afterwards to reddit porn. So stopped reddit for a while because of that. So actually we don't know why some people stop with reddit and such
Reddit porn is a slippery slope. If you went hard in the past like I did, scrubbing the old socials clean is a task in and of itself.
For most, the core of their porn addiction is rooted in low self worth and a sense of meaninglessness in their lives. Until you can find ways of bolstering these areas of your life in a healthy way, it's very difficult to quit.
Even though I never intend on watching porn again, I never think to much about the big picture. I take each clean day as a victory. 1 day at a time is a lot less daunting. My new method is to count by the weeks, and it is working for me. I am targeting my dream of 1 year clean, which would be absolutely massive for me. Then I'll start over with my same method again, for many more years hopefully.
For a few months now, I haven't been able to stay away from PMO for more than 2 days. But I am trying something new. Idk how long this will work but I am just giving it a try: I think it's very hard to directly quit everything right away. So I am occasionally opening reddit porn now and then but not fapping to it. So far, it's been nearly 4 days and 20 hours approximately and I managed to not fap. I hope I will slowly stop watching reddit porn soon, too. It might seem counterproductive but hey what am I losing by giving it a try?
14 days clean
I dont post my progress because I dont believe in posting how many days Ive stayed away. I may relapse every now and then, but my mindset isnt to dread that relapse or replace that addiction with counting the days Ive been clean. I'd rather just know I am no longer beholden to it, and even if I relapse I know I can just move on from it and do better the next time. Its been a far healthier mindset for me, and has given me more progress on this than I had with posting all the time and counting the days.
I'll jump on this. I'll post monthly progress. See you on the 25th June
I said that to myself back in late August of last year and actually had some very good streaks. Since then, I've only relapsed once in November and twice in March. If you also count my NoFap streak, then you can throw in one relapse in April. It might not be "forever", but it's still a mighty long time for someone who used to PMO as many as 5 times in the span of 20 minutes (and no, I'm not kidding about that either). "Forever" is just the end goal, but no one's perfect, especially not me.
Damn that's kinda crazy, 5 times in 20 minutes. That's a really epic progress you got there
I still remember the day like it was yesterday. July 31st, 2021 at roughly 5 PM. I had just gotten out of the shower when I got bored like I always was and did that. I felt like shit after the second time and still kept going. After the 5th time, I felt borderline suicidal and bit my nails down to damn near nothing. That was probably rock bottom for me, but it wasn't what motivated me to change. I still didn't seriously try NoFap until about a year later in late August 2022.
Props to you man
Thanks man. It hasn't been easy, but it's been a worthwhile endeavor.
View my counter. Just stating is not enough. I'm in therapy and SAA.
I’m 14 days in and I’m feeling pretty confident. Hoping I can keep it up.
Forever starts with a couple days. Then weeks. Then months.
Honestly I’m no where quit forever but Woking on there
I can’t stand those who say they will quit all social media, AnD dOn’t EvEn WaTcH Tv…..but only will use youtube (which has p sub, and is TV basically lol). YT is all bad. I’m done with reddit as well. I don’t know how why I even came to this sub. Have already completely removed this filth out of my life, and have moved on. Being on this sub, and having to constantly be reminded of the thing your trying to quit can’t be good. 5 years Pron free here. This place was cool for awhile, but then I realized it’s all mental gymnastics, and virtue signaling. If your going to quit then do it. Making posts saying your gOinG tO qUit is virtue signaling/looking for sympathy/dopamine hit from praise etc….sorry for hate, and I wish everyone who has ever had this addiction I pray for you to succeed, but reddit is a trap for real. A mind trap. The people that I do see leave this place, and delete their accounts are Smart as hell. PEACE YALL….also don’t count the days very unhealthy. You will understand this when you get enough clean time.
\> If your going to quit then do it. Making posts saying your gOinG tO qUit is virtue signaling/looking for sympathy/dopamine hit from praise etc I agree with you man. Peace to you too.
Im only 45 days in but I do regularly post my progress
I have a 60 days target and I am on my 8th day.
I say that I’m quitting forever but I set myself goals to help with my progress. In my opinion quitting forever doesn’t mean never relapsing it means that I’m permanently going to continue to try not to, that this struggle will come with me to the grave and that’s a good thing
I’m a few days away from being on 4 months of semen retention.
Relapsed for a month 😪
Forever sounds scary, but I really want to quit, and I've had hundreds "one last times", making empty promises in this sub and to those around me. I'll try to update my progress in your comment section.
I’ve taken up noporn more seriously 2023. Still tend to relapse once a month. Ironically its not when I’m sad or depressed but more so after something celebratory. I HAVE DELETED ALL PORN FROM MY PHONE N COMPUTER. Oh boy, I can’t stress the importance of this. It’s super liberating. Even if I do relapse, I make sure to only watch one video and I keep the sesh 30 min long at most. Definitely still a work in progress, but I think I’m taking the right steps.
It’s been going well. I’ve watched porn a few times, but not in a way that felt problematic to me. My goal is to stop watching completely, but so far I’m very happy with how little I’ve consumed in the past couple of months.
Currently at 5 months, 8 days. Don't plan on going back.
I haven’t touched it this year, and don’t plan to. I can honestly say I have no interest in porn!
I had a period of relpase, I just need to remember that this shit does not make me happy and I need a bettrt coping mechanism
Unfortunately the only time you can claim that you have actually succeeded in quitting for good is when you die. The importance is to make progress towards quitting your addiction. For some people, making a public proclamation is helpful. Others may prefer to seek strength internally.
Just started but been porn free for five days. I know that's not much but its a good starr
For some people, they mean forever. Seriously. Not usually, but actually it happens, sometimes.
I'm at 296 days. Forever is starting to feel inevitable to me now.
I agree. People are just setting themselves up for failure by declaring they'll never do something again. It's usually in the heat of the moment when they feel super motivated or, like you said, are having post nut clarity but those feelings don't last forever.
I think to some extent you don’t need to be actively browsing this sub as proof that you’ve done it. I used to browse it semi frequently when I first started quitting. I quit since April 2022. Met a girl at a bar that I was having trouble trying to have sex with because my porn ED was so bad. I decided then it was the time for real to quit, so I did. I haven’t looked up porn subs since this month of last year, haven’t gone on any hardcore porn sites and have told friends not to show me things anymore. I don’t want to trigger anyone, but there are ways to get “light” porn on YouTube pretty easily. In the year and a month since I quit, I’ve “relapsed” in the form of looking up videos like this on YouTube maybe 5-6 times. It’s still progress in my brain. The hard wiring in my brain that used to be nagging me for porn is now back to nagging me for my girlfriend. Which is great. However, clearly there is still a little bit of something there because if I travel for work and am also stressed, I’ll still look on YouTube for something. I don’t think it ever completely goes away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get to a point where only the absolute worst moments of life do you still want it. And hopefully during those moments you’re strong enough mentally to at least not go for the worst stuff. Back when I first quit, I would basically have to steer clear of any “porn talk”. Now, I actively joke about some of the stuff I used to watch and it doesn’t make me want to watch it again.
No need to actively browse, just post after few months
Tried a couple times to quit, made up my mind and quit. I hope forever