I Feel Clean Inside…

Years and years of indulgence in what has been my biggest vice ever are behind me.

The indulgence in watching porn and masturbating to it.

I first watched porn when I was around 14–15yrs on one my uncle’s phone, from then on I got hooked. Now I am 27 yrs, that’s more than decade of life.

I remember how guilty and dirty sinful I felt after watching it the first time because of Christianity, I would pray and repent, and promise not to do it again, but when opportunity came I would indulge.

It developed into such a strong habit that it has come become a hard nut to crack, it got worse when we got internet at home and I started living alone in my room. Hours and hours of pornography I would watch, I nearly exhausted the content on the sites. I started to develop a taste, I started to know pornstars by name and having favorites, I went back and forth between very kinky and not so kinky stuff. Watching porn would become the place I learned about sex above all places.

My indulgence in porn and masturbation made me a dull and timid guy through campus, I didn’t have a girlfriend or even sex despite my gym physique that was upcoming at that time.

I speculate this habit paved way also for other addictive behavior such as sports betting, addiction to social media, extreme lifting at the gym ( which led to injuries ) etc. Gambling was the worst of them. I struggled with quitting sports betting for so long. I had to lose large sums of money according to my economic level at that time to feel enough pain and call quit.

In my catalogue of quitting bad habits, porn and masturbation has been the most challenging. It has been the toughest by far to uproot.

I have read books about it ( Your Brain on Porn ) , I have studied how it rewires the brains, I have talked to be people about it, prayed about it, looked into childhood trauma, wrote about it, forcefully tried to quit, have tried to meditate it away, had a girlfriend, cried about it, be busy etc…there isn’t any way I have tried and didn’t fail. I can’t keep count of the many ways I failed.

The pattern was always the same; quit for a few days or nearly a month. Then someway somehow relapse hardddd! Then another cycle of quitting and relapsing would begin.

One would ask how do I know for sure that I quit? I do not. But I know for sure is that from within myself I feel I won’t go back again, I feel the same way about being vegan ( been vegan for 2.5yrs ). There is also a price to pay if I ever go back. It is a certain sum of money I will have to pay to some blocking app to get premium access to block the nude sites. My mind knows that I am not bluffing when I say that I will pay the sum. My mind doesn’t want to lose money this way, so it will do everything to ensure that I don’t go back, It hates the consequence of losing that money. I also hate that blocking site. I also know that blocking site does not have the power to stop one from such a habit, it might delay but it won’t stop.

Might the mind develop immunity to this ? Yes it might. But it has worked so far. I read somewhere that for something to work, for the mind to be engaged, it needs to give something of value or avoid losing something of value. In this case it is money. I personally I am also realizing what I also cannot afford to lose anymore of; which is time. Indulgence in porn is one the ways that I have not only wasted my time but my own life. I have wasted my own life in it.

I feel free and clean in my internal environment, for many years I have suffered, I have really suffered, I have felt shameful with myself, I have felt worthless, I was a smart kid before this habit took me over, my confidence was at its lowest, I have become anxious and depressed, I became a fraudulent and shortcut seeking human, conflicted inside and all other dysfunctional ways , mainly because of this one habit. Just this one. The corner stone of all my dysfunctions.

I feel so fulfilled and joyous that I am free, that I have gotten back my life. That this stumbling block is removed from my path. I don’t know the way to quitting porn and masturbation, I think people who say they do are not truthful. What I know for sure is that, one has to have an undying desire to quit it, this will pave his path to his freedom. This will ensure that he will get up again and again after the countless number of failure that he will experience.

I feel like a new life has begun for me.

Thank You!