Losing the war against myself

[IncrediblePanda]

There's a monster inside of me.

It's the personification of all my flaws.

It represents arrogance, self-centeredness, weak-willedness, greed, gluttony, everything wrong with my character.

Every day he tags along. He tells me I don't matter, that I can't get anything done, that I'm worthless. He portrays the world as an inescapable hell of pain and suffering, in which hope and goodwill are like droplets in an ocean of misery. I let "it" take over. And I let my world rot away in those delusions. Over and over again. Not fighting back. It makes me hate myself.
It chooses indifference over hope. Selfishness over kindness. Short-term pleasure over fulfillment. It's an idiot. But it succeeds. Because it leaves me to deal with the consequences of its actions.
It leaves me to deal with the dread. With the self-hatred. The shame. The regrets. And it lets me think that I'm responsible. And I blame myself.
Admittedly, it's right.
This is my fault. By not fighting back, I'm letting it be me.
I've never handled well things being my fault.
I just want to crawl in a corner and cry.
Except that's precisely what it wants.

And I've lost the war. Because i was too weak.

What was it? Porn. i've been addicted to this crap for years. it sucked the life out of me. Because of it I'm lonely and unlikable. It turned me into someone i hate.

I've been trying to get a hold of this addiction for years but i just keep giving in again and again. I blame myself for it. I made the conscious choice to watch porn for the first time when i was 11. I accidentally found a porn website and i came back to it out of curiosity. What a mistake. Those have been the worst 6 years of my life.

I don't think there's hope for me anymore. I've been addicted for too long. I'm corrupted beyond repair. When you masturbate a lot it starts getting less pleasurable. So you have to be more... creative... i guess i could put it that way. I've done some pretty f*cked up things for self-pleasure. I don't wanna get inappropriate so i won't talk about it in detail, but it's bad... During the day i'm a nobody. During the night, when no one is looking, i'm a freak. No one knows about my porn addiction. Or maybe the internet companies that spy on us, or the FBI. But fuck them.

I wonder what my life could have been like. As a CS student, I've made some pretty cool projects. I've made an app 30k people downloaded. I've always loved solving problems using computers. Sometimes it just so happens that millions of people have the same problem as you. Be the first one to solve it, and congrats, you made the world a better place. That's what I wanted to dedicate my life to. But i'm too weak.

I mean, I want to live, I want to do things... but.. why does it have to be so hard.. To pull yourself together, especially in tough times... I believe it's passion that allows us to do it. When you care about something so much that you can spend sleepless night working... I've felt that many times before.

A few months ago, in my university, there was a contest. We had to optimize a C program to make it at fast as possible. I was passionate about it, I spent countless hours on it, and I won the contest. Passion in what i do led me to success. And I had so much fun doing it i didn't even think about porn for a while.

But lately I haven't been feeling passionate about anything at all.
I feel like I'm loosing my grip on reality actually. I feel like nothing is real and I don't care about anything anymore.

I've considered killing myself before but never to this extent.

I feel like i need to decide now. Whether there will be a tomorrow or not. I've already prepared farewell messages to my few close friends. I know people will mourn me but I don't feel it's enough to keep me alive.

I came to this forum, because I... don't want to involve any of my close friends. I don't want to force them to worry about me. Here the dynamic is different. You've read this because you wanted to. You can answer or not, that's up to you. You don't have to feel involved as you don't know who I am. So it's less of a strain.

 

[Holding my breath]

Hi and welcome to SF. Pleased you found a place where you can express your feelings without the worry of upsetting anyone. You sound like an intelligent talented person who has already experienced success. You have a lot to offer and so much you could achieve. Addiction, to anything, is a difficult beast to overcome, but it is possible. Channeling those physical urges in a different direction, perhaps a physical workout, hitting a boxing punch bag or doing a HIT workout, something which will release positive hormones. Perhaps worth a try.
Anyway, stick around and I hope you find our little space on the internet helpful. Xx

 

[1Lefty]

Greetings @IncrediblePanda

Welcome to SF!
We're a community of people helping each other
We're supportive, not judgmental

I think you're in a good place here. Just in the past few weeks, I've seen at least 2 posts from others with similar problems, so you're not alone.
I think recovery from any addiction is possible, and it's good that you have the self-awareness to determine that something in your life is negative.
The first step toward treating an addiction is admitting there is a problem - addiction is the disease that insists there is no problem. And I've heard that the first step is the hardest, you've already arrived at that knowledge, so I think your chances at recovery are good.

peace

 

[LonelyHiker]

Hello @IncrediblePanda, thanks for sharing your story.

Any addiction can be overcome if a person truly wants to be freed from it, and you certainly seem to fit that criteria. And in spite of your struggle, you've accomplished quite a bit.

There are resources and many support groups out there for this particular addiction. The beast can be defeated.

Best of luck to you ☮️

 

[may71]

I'm sorry that you're going through this IncrediblePanda.

You've got a lot to live for and a lot that at heart, you want to live for, it's just that you have to beat the porn addiction. It's hard to overcome an addiction, but I think the results of that would be fantastic for you.

I could try to suggest some treatment methods for you if you're interested.

I hope things can get better soon.

 

[SamB]

There is a book called ‘your brain on porn’ by Garry Wilson, I think you might find it an interesting read.
Evolution has given humans a brain chemistry that encourages eating and having sex and that means they are both very difficult addictions because it’s not really possible to use abstinence as a method.
That said, I think your addiction is probably psychological as well. From what’ve said you seem to have a personality that likes to solve problems and I think this is contributing where you are giving yourself the problem of finding porn and then you get a double reward of solving the problem and also the sexual satisfaction.
One of the things that you can try and do is to limit the stacking of rewards, so never reward yourself with porn and try and curtail your searching behaviour and the time you spend on each session.

 

[IncrediblePanda]

Thank you for the kind words. Your answers gave me the push I needed. I have not given in my addiction today.

It's just that... I've tried to stop many times before but failed over and over again. No Nut November, New Year's resolutions... And when you keep failing it can be tempting to give up. To believe that there is just no point in trying. And in my case I've only got myself to blame so it has made me hate myself a lot. Especially upon finding myself unable to justify my failure to resist those wretched, primal instincts.

Maybe I was just not in the right mindset. And since porn is a taboo in our society, I feel ashamed and never talk about it to anyone.

I don't want to involve my friends of family. I want to fix this on my own. Is this a good idea? Should I seek external help (such as NoFap)?

There is a book called ‘your brain on porn’ by Garry Wilson, I think you might find it an interesting read.

Thanks SamB, I will check it out.

 

[KM76710]

@IncrediblePanda

Welcome and I am glad you joining and are finding members here that are caring and supportive with hopefully some helpful advice for you. I hope that you keep returning and posting. This is a good place to share back and forth in trying to help others.

 

[may71]

I've tried to stop many times before but failed over and over again

Relapse is just part of recovery. It's expected that you're going to relapse along the way, it's just that you try to put as much distance as you can between each episode.

Especially upon finding myself unable to justify my failure to resist those wretched, primal instincts

The way I see it, sex desire is not in itself something wretched, it's just that frequent ejaculation is a problem. There's other issues too, but that's the main one imho. There's also just the vileness that's common with porn too.

I want to fix this on my own. Is this a good idea? Should I seek external help (such as NoFap)?

I think if you haven't been able to recover on your own, getting some help to do it is a good idea. I'm not sure what the best sources of help are, but it sounds like it's worth looking for.

 

[SamB]

I think it’s good to separate porn from masturbation, they are heavily linked for you but they aren’t the same thing. It is quite possible to give up porn but giving up sexual satisfaction is very different and I don’t think it is necessarily a very good thing to do.
I think it’s good to step back and look at the consequences and what your motivations are. There are various potential impacts on you, from the amount of time you spend actually doing the acts to the impact they have on your ability to concentrate when not and then the desensitising effect and how that will impact upon your view of the world and how you form relationships with others. So the goal is to change a limit the behaviour that most impacts on you and find a healthy balance between satisfaction and impact.
There isn’t a lot of information out there on porn and sex addiction and it’s often considered taboo or even shameful. But I always think of it as being very similar to food addiction, food is equivalent to sexual gratification and porn is junk food. Diets that try and restrict too much only work in the short term and people soon revert, the long term solution is to change your lifestyle to have a healthy relationship with food that is sustainable. I think the same applies to masturbation and porn, it’s about finding the right balance where you can be sexually satisfied but the effects are not impacting upon your life. So rather than trying to give up totally I think it’s more sustainable to think about a management plan where you acknowledge your needs and put in place a system that you can follow that satisfies those but does not lead to escalation or result in impacts upon your life.
Think about limiting the number of times and duration that you masturbate to a reasonable amount that leaves you satisfied but does not impact heavily upon your life. Then if you can, giving up porn would be good but that might not be sustainable for you so if not you could limit the amount of times you use porn and in particular I recommend reducing the searching behaviour and the extremity. One option is to have a set of porn that you use and then rather than looking for new porn each time you only use from that existing set.

 

[LumberJack]

There is so much in your original post, @IncrediblePanda. I also struggle with porn addiction- and I have a slightly different approach. I used to be fighting a war against myself, too. I had many addictions at the time. Porn probably was just an adjunct to drinking and drugs.

I would act out with porn when I got loaded. I rarely went out when drinking, because I didn’t want to hurt anyone by driving. I got lonely and found that porn almost filled that gap. Almost. The reason (IMHO) addictive behaviors expand over time is that they seem to fill an unmet need, and yet not entirely. I have noticed myself accelerating my acting out because I think all I need is a little bit MORE to feel ok.

Well, that never worked, but I’m a slow learner. Something that helped me mitigate my self hatred involved engaging with my pain directly. I read an article by a Buddhist teacher named Jack Kornfield about stopping the war. I thought about it for a while and eventually I decided, hey nothing else has worked, maybe trying something different would help.

Your mention of fighting a war against yourself reminded me of that article. I tried to find out for myself if stopping the war would lead to less or more acting out. I was worried that my addiction would just explode if I dropped the struggle, but I found quite the reverse happened. I could say more if you are interested. I was not ready to stop the war when I was younger. However, after thinking about it for a while, the idea of making peace with the “unwanted” parts started to make sense.

I don’t know your full story, so I can’t say what you should do. This is merely what helped me. I still wish I used porn less. I have managed, though, to separate myself from drugs and alcohol. So far I’ve managed 2 years since my last chemical acting out.

If you want to know more I could say how I started to make peace with my “unwanted” parts. I know that it is easier said than done. I have stumbled many times along the way. It’s a ton of work. I hate work!

I can say that I’ve never regretted doing that work after the fact, which is why I continue. There is a strange kind of satisfaction that comes from doing the work, and then noticing my life and behavior improved over time. In my case, others noticed a change in me before I did.

 

[LumberJack]

Ugh. That first reply I wrote was so looong! Here’s the short version: I was able to feel less at war with myself by considering that I don’t have to make it a fight. Still have a struggle with porn, but I’m making progress, and it’s so much easier when I work with the parts of me that I don’t like as teachers rather than enemies. They have something important to say, and are waiting for me to listen.