SuperSaiyanGod

It's 12:24 and I just got up. It took me several hours to wake up and get up. I feel a little bad about it, but not that bad. I'll just try the same thing tomorrow and maybe it will work.

Okay, I did it. At the end I was like YOLO.

The five barriers to my development I need to power through through. I've thought of these first four concepts as things that I need to change in order to get my life to a place where I want it to be. I want to be a person who has discipline, who is focused on their goal of becoming passionate and very knowledgeable about psychology, and a person who has a satisfying social life. What is surprising is that all of these have a pretty simple solution. The last one I added later, because that's probably the biggest obstacle, but in contrast to the other ones, it's negative - it's about removing something from my life. However, the solution seems pretty similar to the other ones - resisting the urge to "screw this" until it becomes natural and pleasant. The sleeping habits barrier. This is important because good sleeping habits are something that makes a lot less urges to appear, that gives me plenty of time for every activity that I want to do, and that makes getting up in the morning a pleasant moment, when I'm able to look forward to the day filled with various acitvities, instead of having to get up at the very last moment because I have to go to a class. My sleeping habits are terrible, but I've already broken that barrier once. It was a couple of days of not getting enough sleep, because Brian, the automatic part of my brain, was accustomed to going to sleep as late as possible and getting up around noon. So on the first day that I went to sleep at 10pm I was unable to fall asleep until way too late and then on the next day I was very tired, unable to do anything. But I got up at exactly 7:30am. I spent this time on the internet because that was the easiest thing I could occupy my mind with if I wanted to stay awake. That repeated a couple of times, but then it suddenly became easy to fall asleep and to get up at the right hours. So this barrier is easy, it doesn't require any thinking, I just have to power through it.The studying barrier. This is probably the most important thing in my life and the very essence of getting serious about life. Studying should be my main occupation, the very core of my day. If I want to be a scientist, I should be able to study for the rest of my life and be able to do it with pleasure. It should be something that I look forward to every day. Something without which I see the day as wasted. It should be my main passion. It is something that is both the thing I should be doing right now, and the thing that if well done should improve my entire future, in regard to jobs and money. The problem is that I want to start studying for real, but when I actually do sit down with a book, I can't focus, I suddenly have so many ideas about what else I could do, I suddenly feel bored, I suddenly feel overwhelmed with all the things I have to learn. I just have a crappy work ethics. I wonder how long it will take, but if I commit myself to studying despite these difficulties, if I do it with great discipline, if I'm seriously serious about it and if I approach it from the right angle (fragmentize it properly and stretch it over time reasonably, so as to reduce the feeling of overwhelment) - if I do all those things, which is actually one thing, sooner or later I'm gonna have a breakthrough and from that point on studying is gonna be pleasant and easy. And I look forward to that.The reading barrier. This is a important because I need to read a lot for studying purposes, and in general I'm just a very intelectual person and I want reading to be something that I do a lot and enjoy. This is very similar to studying, but it's still more engaging and fun. The problem is that I read very slowly and so it's not as pleasant as it could be. And I always have a lot of reading to do. It would be impossible for me to read everything I had to, even if I was spending every waking hour on reading. However, when I try to read faster, I don't understand anything. If I was able to somehow increase my reading speed by even 20%, it would help me greatly and it would be the first step towards reading faster. So I guess it's similar to the sleeping habits - I just have to power through it while trying to read a bit faster than I think possible, and maybe in a few days it will get easier. Then I'll do it again even faster, and then again. I'm not sure if it's just repetition, and I'm not sure how many book I'd have to read to see any effects. But I'm pretty sure this is not complicated.The social barrier. This is the one I left for last, because that doesn't seem simple at all. This is important because I want to have a social life, I want to have some deeper connections with people, I want to be able to talk to then both in groups and one-on-one, have topics that I can talk about, talk about deeper stuff instead of only the shallow stuff, and be able to attract girls. I feel empty without other people. Unfortunately, I have no plan for how to do any of those things. I suspect getting out of the addiction and getting serious about life might help greatly. And then I just have to talk to people, but I've actaually been doing it forever and it hasn't improved. The conversations are still shallow or short. I still have no idea how to find myself at a party. I'm gonna leave it for now, maybe I'll think of something later.The urges barrier. This is not complicated at all. There are four things I have to do: plan my day and do a lot of things so that I'm tired in the evening, know the triggers and avoid them, use the available resources to sort of pump me up in the morning and in the evening, and remember to ride the urges like a wave. I've seriously given it so much thought already and learned so much the last time, that I'm gonna leave it at that.I don't like this post. But I understand what I mean, so it's good enough. I'm actually pretty excited about it right now, but I don't feel like writing any conclusion.

I'm gonna apply, though I don't really know what to write in there.

On the way home I went to buy a fuckton of healthy food to try out and also to never be out of food when I'm home (preventive action for junk food cravings). Now it's 7pm. Only three hours until I can go to bed. I mostly wanna go to bed because then I won't have to study, and I really don't want to study. I don't feel like doing anything. After that binge with everything I feel... heavy. Used up, full of toxin. Nothing tastes good, I don't feel like eating anything or doing anything because don't feel like it will bring me any joy. I just have to wait it out.

One more time. It's 3:15am. I just, on an impulse, deleted every game that I had. A couple of days ago I found out my new computer is almost as good for gaming as my previous one, even though it is not designed for it. And so I've been playing three games almost all the time. I think I first skipped classes last Monday, although that was mostly to make time for porn, and then I skipped everything that I could. Including today. I just had to make as much room for gaming as possible. My sleeping routine, the one I was so happy to develop, is broken. The last few days I've been going to sleep so late, because getting off the computer and leaving the game world meant that I had to return to the real world, and I didn't want that. I wanted to escape, but I'm not sure what. It is gaming that made the anxiety a lot worse - without it, I probably would have studied at least an hour or two a day. But with it, I was getting more and more anxious about how much I have to learn before the first exams start in 9 days. There's a ton of material I have to learn. The other thing I didn't wanna think about was my fucking family - my phone broke and now I'm without one (doesn't feel bad at all), but everyone is freaking out and messaging me daily on facebook asking whether I've done something about it. I didn't, first of all I don't care that much, and second of all, I had to make time for gaming. As much as possible. So I've been going to sleep as late as possible. And then a terrible thing about that was that I was waking up late, almost at the time when I had to leave for classes. I didn't wanna go to them, because I wanted to game as much as possible. So I was getting even more frustrated because a) I wanted a lot of time for gaming, b) I had very little time in the "morning" for anything, and c) I didn't wanna leave at all but I had to. Actually leaving for any purpose was something I wanted to avoid at all cost. Even going to buy groceries (i.e. potatoe chips and chocolate) or going to the bathroom to take a shower were something I didn't wanna do. Plan. I'm am now going to sleep at 3:30am. The plan for tomorrow is as follows: I'm gonna wake up and get up at noon, then immediately take a shower and try to eat something healthy (gonna have to improvise with whatever I have left). This is what my morning routine used to be at the beginning of the year, when I had a great streak and was doing everything right. Then I'll do a workout with the dumbbells or read for a class to which I'm going to go to next. After that I'll have a couple of hours so I'll clean the room and I'll do some pretending to study, and then I'll go to sleep at 10pm, and fail to fall asleep until way too late to get any sleep. But I'll get up at 7:30 and do the exact same thing on the next day. All while trying to resist porn urges that are going to hit probably tomorrow evening. Or maybe the minute I go to sleep today. Oh, I'm also gonna apply for Beyond, and I won't get admitted. But at least that will be some serious dumb action.

Today me and some of my friends were talking about relationships. It made me realise what a complete crap my life is. How way behind I am with everything. How could I ever attract someone the way I am now? Social skills. Nothing is gonna change until this changes: I have absolutely nothing to talk about with people. Usually "how you doing" is the most I can think of in a conversation. I've been gaming for the last two days, almost non-stop. This is a fucking waste of time.

Just a quick update, I woke up at the right hour, though it took me some time to fall asleep. But the rest of the night's been okay. I'm clean so far. I was only sleepy in the morning but now it's okay. I've assembled a list of five books that I really want to read, so I'm going to start right now, because I'm a very slow reader. If I start this very moment, I can still get a solid 90 minutes of reading before I have to go to sleep. The books are: How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie - I just thought that it won't hurt, and since I want to finally develop some social skills, this is as good a place to start as any.Star Wars: Dark Force Rising - part two of the trilogy I started a while ago. Since I starve for exciting fiction, this is good enough.Human Motivation by G. Franken - it's a textbook for a subject that I have this term, but I really want to read it as it will allow me to pretend to know a lot about psychology much better that I'm able to now.Two books of short stories by H. P. Lovecraft, I've only read one book in polish so far, but I want to read some in english. And I just found two of them in the library, so yay!I gotta start right now because I'm a very slow reader. Two hours a day of reading while properly focused should be enough to read at a very satisfying pace.

Thanks @WorkInProgress, your replies are actually helpful. One more time. So it's 10:09. A couple of hours ago I bought junk food, a lot of it. It started being terrible after the first few bites. But I still ate too much and don't feel good right now. I took the rest of it, put in in this kind of plastic bag, then I went outside (it's very cold), found this black, rectangular container and put the bag inside. I know if I didn't do it now, I would probably start tomorrow with this kind of food. Now I'm going to sleep. The routine still stands. It'll probably be hard to fall asleep today, because of the amazing diet and other amazing choices during the day - but at least I'll keel discipline. I'm skipping shower because it's too late for that. I wanna try one more time. I almost cried and I'm feeling emotionally pumped up. I already suffered through several days last time, so I just have to do the same thing now. I'll start tomorrow with healthy breakfast and exercise.

Relapsing. Third day of relapsing in a row. Yesterday I went to sleep at 23:30, because 1) I was watching porn until exactly 10pm and then I had to take a shower and 2) the time on my new computer was an hour late. So I got a lot less sleep during the night. I got up at the right hour, but I was very sleepy. After a couple of hours I decided to go to bed for those 1,5 hours, but after that I was sleepy again and I went to sleep again, and woke up at 3pm. And I didn't go to classes but instead I've been watching porn ever since, and it's now 6:30pm. FUUUCK! Why can't I stop?! Right now the only thing I want to do is go buy junk food and eat it while watching some tv show well into the night.

Yeah, I knew it was gonna be something like that. You should get angry and tell her if she didn't want to talk about something, she shouldn't have brought it up in the first place. Then she'll either be honest with you or you'll have one less problem.

Relapse. I just relapsed with porn. I went to sleep with a thought that I have enough and if I have an urge after I wake up, I'm gonna go for it. I don't know why I did that. Probably just gave in to the things the addiction's been telling me. It laster for five hours and it was completely different from all these fantasies I've been enduring. After I eat I'm gonna start working on the program immediately.

Don't read this is you have a porn addiction, this contains heavy triggers! I just had to be honest with myself and write down everything that comes to mind. The things my addiction used today to try to get me to watch porn: Today's SLAA meeting was canceled and you can't do it today without that meeting so you can just spare yourself the hardship and do it right now.You really miss it and you are entitled to the pleasure.You are really triggered right now, to a point where you can't make it.Your periods of abstinence are getting longer and more frequent. You can binge all you want and you'll be back on track faster than the last time - because of the progress you've made this time.(Relating to truth number 3) You are not one of these people, you are worthless, you won't ever beat me, and you won't ever amount to anything.You can't think of an answer to number 5. Actually you are not convinced about answer 4 either. The one that you are thinking for 5 - you don't even believe it. You can't even think of what is the lie in this one. So if you watch porn right now, maybe you'll find the right answers when your mind is clear, or the next time you abstain.The workshop says people in early stages of healthy recovery often test the waters of recovery by attempting recovery for a few days then acting out. It says it's not unhealthy. This would be just a temporary break and then you would go back to recovery - and it's gonna go better next time.You are making these excuses yourself. This is all you, there is no separate entity inside you that's telling you these things. You just really wanna do this. You hate your recovery, you said so yourself. The only thing you love is pornography, because it's always there for you, it makes you feel good, warm and excited, it does whatever you want it to, it will always take care of you, it will never lie to you, it is the best thing in the universe, you would do anything to get it, the pleasure it gives you is godlike, you just want to serve it and be its slave. You are slave to porn and you love it with all your heart. It makes your life so much bettter than anything ever could. You will never have an answer to this, because you know it's true with every ounce of your soul.You can never do it without therapy, and you won't ever open up enough to talk about all of this. And you'll never be able to tell your dad. You are a fucking coward.Most of your answers are forced, you don't really believe them.The lies that it's telling me in each of those points are: I can't do it without the meeting.I am the person who wants to do it, not the addiction.The urge is impossible to overcome.I'm allowed to binge because I've made progress.I am worthless and I can never change.It will be easier to get rid of these excuses next time.Watching porn today would be a controlled decision, and then it would be easy to get back to abstention again.I and my addiction are the same entity. I hate my recovery and being healthy. The only thing I want in life is to watch porn.I can't do it without therapy.I don't believe some of these answers.The truth is actually this: One time I went 11 days clean, and I didn't go to a meeting at any point of that time.I don't want to do it because I want my life back. I want to be serious about my life. I want to be healthy and free. It is the addiction, a thing external from me, that wants me to do it.Every urge is possible to overcome, thousands of people have done it before me, they've been free for years and decades, and this urge isn't even the strongest one.I'm making progress and I'll make even more of it if I abstain today. It's just three more hours and eight more minutes. I'm not allowed to binge, I've made that rule myself.I am valuable.I'll be the same as today. Probably even harder because of the further bit of damage to my brain.This would not be a controlled decision, this would be going back to the addiction because of an excuse.The use of pornography has developed in my life as a functional tool - its function was to help me deal with emotions in my childhood and especially in middle school. It is just a tool and now it's a useless one. Also, I actually like my recovery, I like the hope and the satisfaction of being clean. And I want plenty of other things in life, like love, sex, friendships, and knowledge.I can, I'll do it with my recovery workshop and the communities here and on reddit.Yes, but eventually I'll believe them.This was very hard. But it's ran out of arguments for now. Other reasons for why I won't do it: I want to keep discipline and go to bed exactly at 10pm. It's my goal to develop a perfect sleeping habit and I really want to accomplish it. Developing it will help me with many things in my life, among them my recovery, my studying and health. It will also bring positive emotions into my life. However it's 18:50 and the porn binge would never last three hours or less. It would be closer to five hours, and possibly more, possibly even 10 or 12.I've started a porn-free January challenge. I don't want to fail myself.

Sleeping habits - it works! Yesterday I went to sleep like always, at 10pm, and I slept through the entire night. When the alarm went off, I got out of bed immediately, then right away went for a shower and then made breakfast. I mean, I didn't sleep the entire time, I was awake several times I think, but it never got to a point where I got impatient about falling asleep again. I'm not even sure how long any of that was, might have been just a coule of breaths. I'm happy that this method is working so well, and it's only been three or four days. It's all because I was commited to keeping discipline - getting up exactly at 7:30 was a lot more important than getting more sleep. And the entire attempt has been governed by the fact that this will GREATLY reduce the number of urges I get. New pain in knee. However, this night my other knee started to hurs quite a lot - it hurts when I switch positiong, be it either standing up, sitting down, or shifting to the other side while in bed. It hurts pretty bad and in a way I never felt before. I wonder if it has something to do with the fall I had about 10 days ago. I'll give it two days and if it doesn't start to decrease, I'll go to a doctor. And then I'll have both my knees and my ankle checked out, because the ankle problem also appeared about two weeks ago. I'm kind of a hypochondriac, so I'm a little bit scared from the situation. Addiction talking to me. Yesterday I was having thouse thoughts in which I missed watching porn and some part of me was trying to find an excuse to go back to it, looking for it even at the things I read at my recovery workshop. These are the responses I got from a guy who is over five years clean I'm very happy about that. And then: I'm just gonna put it here so that I have it all in one place. I'm gonna keep using it until my workshop gives me its own tool. So what does the voice say? It says You're going to relapse anyway, so why even bother trying? and also You really miss it and you can't live without it. The lies in that are Relapse is inevitable, and You abslutely need porn, you can't live without it. The truth is: I am in control of my own actions and this is just a way you are trying to decieve me. I mean, you think you are helping me, but that hasn't been working for years, so I don't want to go back to you anymore. Also I can live without it, I'm doing it right now, and most people have no need for it, so I can live that way too. The last one was actually pretty hard to answer. Status. And so it has been one week without porn. There have been urges and long, compulsive thoughts and fantasies, but for now I'm one week clean. I wanted to not keep counting days, but Brian insisted on it. Okay Brian, I'm gonna give you that one, because you've been good this night. So right now I feel like this guy below - ready for more. Oh, and it's also been a bit longer without any games, I'm not even sure, maybe 10 days. And without junk-food, I don't even know, I haven't touched it since I went to my parents' house for Christmas. So it's been about three weeks now? Plan of day. What else do I have to say? I don't have any classes today, so I gotta plan my day carefully. Let's see, I have a lot of energy, so I can easily do some studying. In the evening I'm going for an SLAA meeting. Last time I went three weeks ago, and before that it's been about 8 months of absence. No stretching today, but I gotta do some treatments for my old knee. I can also juggle and read for pleasure. Damn, this all sounds boring. What I'd really like to do is something social. Oh wait, I also want to start on the recovery workshop! Yes, that last one is seriously exciting. Edit: Okay, I went through my journal just to find out! I am actually 8 days clean! from porn, 10 days clean from gaming, and about 17-18 days clean from junk-food. YEAH!

@WorkInProgress, what? Oh, I get it, it's a pun So. I'm leaving for a single class in an hour, and then I'm gonna have three days without any classes. And I had a thought: "you know what, I can skip one class every term without any reprecussions. So maybe I'll just stay home today and watch porn and then I'll start over after that?" And then I was like WHAT?! I GOTTA GO TO THAT CLASS IMMEDIATELY! Actually, this thought has occured more than once today. I don't like it at all, I'm afraid I'll relapse.

Brian. This night I remembered a concept from this video about sexual fantasies and porn fantasies. So I've decided to refer to the part of my brain that I don't control yet as Brian. See, it's a wordplay on the word brain. Sleeping habits - yeah, at least I kept discipline. So the way Brain works is that you can compare him to a 10 year old kid who doesn't know what he wants. For example, seing as how Brian is accustomed to go to sleep at around 3-7am and wake up at 3pm, last night, when we went to sleep at exactly 10pm (due to my astonishing discipline), he thought this was only a nap. And so after 5 hours of sleep we woke up and since he didn't feel like sleeping at all, we spent the remaining 4,5 hours in bed with me trying to fall asleep. And then the entire day Brian begged me to go to sleep, and I had to come up with numerous was to ignore him, because I wanted to go to sleep at exactly 10pm, so that my sleeping pattern normalizes. And so I waited, and Brian wanted to go to sleep, and I waited. Then, finally, we went to sleep at the right hour. And then Brian woke up after three hours, because he thought this was a nap! And then I was trying to fall asleep for another 4 or 5 hours! And, after all that time, when I was finally able to convince Brian to get sleepy again, and I did that through meditation and trying to keep calm, he decided that it's time to go to sleep, and not for a nap! Fuuuck! So yeah, I ended up with 3 hours of sleep, then 4,5 hours of waiting, and then about 2 hours of an on and off kind of sleep, that I had to stop forcefully when the alarm went off. Oh, and most of those last 2 hours were nightmares. Currently it's 10:23, and Brian wants to go to sleep again. Dreams of relapse and nightmares. In those last two hours I had a dream in which I relapsed with porn. It was a decision-based relapse, the one where "I just want to go back to porn and I don't care". It all felt terrible, but a while after I woke up, I realised it was just a dream. Good, this helps me remember how crappy that would be. But on the other hand, it's kinda triggering, because it shows me the rush of excitement. And the thought that I don't wanna recover and that I just wanna go back to porn still hapens to me quite frequently. I don't think it's Brian, I think it's mostly me - but I'm not gonna think about that until my recovery workshop tells me to. It's only been a couple of days clean, but I still haven't started doing it from the beginning. After the relapse dream, the charactes from the movie I was watching in the dream started to try to kill me and my friends Joker-style. I woke up ten minutes before the alarm because of that. Maybe it's good the nightmare was so late in the night, because otherwise it would probably make it harder for me to fall asleep. New computer. My brother already chose a new computer for me and my parents are gonna pay for it. It's the kind I was talking about - it doesn't have any gaming gear, and it's only made for the internet, work, and for moving around with it. So in that way it's actually no different than my old computer, the only real difference is gonna be the battery time. I don't really know how to phrase what I feel. All my life, getting a new computer was a possibility to play all the games that would never work on the older one, and to watch porn comfortably. And now I don't do those two things. Now it's just a tool for writing and using the internet. But I don't feel neutral about that, I feel kinda sad about the part of my life that I'm letting go. Plan for the day - don't fall asleep. I've got a few things planned that involve a bit more moving. I already worked out yesterday and put a little bit on top today so as to increase the burn a little, so now it's time to stretch and clean a bit around the apartment. The only studying I'm up for today is a brief revision for the class I have today. The evening scares me though, but studying in this state is the worst thing I can think of. The plan for repairing my sleeping habits keeps my mind off porn a little. It's just so straightforward and simple - I just have to keep the discipline in one aspect of my life. Actually I keep it in several aspects, but this one is one of the most important right now. Abstaining from sleep is very much like abstaining from porn. I just have to not go to bed, not lie down on the desk, not sit on the couch, not open any porn and not touch my dick. This actually isn't that hard.

Sleeping habits - at least I kept discipline. It's a little after 8am. I went to sleep as planned, at exactly 10pm. I fell asleep almost immediately, and then I woke up at 3am and from that point on I couldn't fall asleep. There was also something thrashing around outside of my window, like someone's satelite dish or something like that. I actually woke up because of a nightmare and then I was anxious for the rest of the night - I'm kinda scared of the dark, and even when I don't read any creepy stuff, it still comes back sometimes. So with all that, and also with me not feeling very sleepy, I was just lying there for hours. Then I got a bit drowsy, after what I thought was 2-3 hours, but in fact just as I was about to fall asleep again, the alarm went off. How amazing. Oh, I actually fell asleep a little bit before that, but I think I was entangled in another, half-dreaming, nightmare and it got me even more anxious. Plan for the day: don't study at all but instead try to keep busy so that you won't fall asleep before 10pm. Not entering the bed helps, it's kinda similar to the porn urges. Oh, I hope my new book arrives today. It's a textbook about psychology of motivation, well-written, and it's gonna help me pass an exam and look like a person who knows a lot about psychology. But actually, I bought it because I've seen the inside of this book and it was seriously one of the most exciting moments of that week for me. Edit: 12:31. 9,5 more hours before I can go to sleep. The book isn't there yet, but it might be today. I was stretching and working out with my dumbbells. I did five sets, but there was a break before the last one and then I didn't have energy. Oh, I think I can eat food again in an hour. That's gonna be exciting, another reason not to go to sleep. Right now I feel like going to sleep. I'm also getting some minor yet scary urges for porn. I'm gonna juggle for a little while. Edit 2: It's there! Imma go get it! Gosh, this is exciting! By the way, I didn't juggle, but I was playing an old song I once recorded with my friend. It's 20 minutes long, and I'm astonished how much of it I remember.

Or maybe it's completely unrelated, and you've only relapsed for some other reason? Maybe you weren't cautious, didn't plan ahead etc.? It's the same thing as gaming, only harder. Also, from what I read, there is no connection between prostate cancer and masturbation. So yeah, that shows how conclusive the results are at the moment.

I have an idea, I'm gonna quote my own entries so that I find it easier to see what has change for these last few days. I haven't had that thought today, and I think also yesterday. I mean, I have this small feeling that it sucks that I can't do it ever again, but it's not as violent as it was before. I'm not gonna pretend that thought is completely gone though, it's only a lot less extreme. Haven't done that in about two days either. I mean, I always do that before going to sleep or a nap, but that time it was just in the middle of the day. Again, this is related to that feeling from the first quote. So, these urges are a lot less violent, at least for now. I'm so happy for every day that I go clean. Also I'm getting these unwanted fantasies that last for hours at a time, but I find that I don't have to react to them. I only reacted to the first one, which lasted for 9 hours and I reacted with masturbation with as little fantasy as possible. So that's good, I hope I can learn that forever. I haven't done a lot of the recovery program since I first wrote about it. I want to split my time between mostly studying and a bit less the program. But I procrastinated from the first one these last few hours, I just wanted to wait for the time I can go to bed. Which is in 16 minutes, as I want to have a discipline not only with getting up, but also with the physical going to bed. @WorkInProgress, that's not really what I think about that, I don't really feel like talking to any of them about that.

Hey dude, good to see you on the forum. Start a journal, read the blog article, watch the videos and get in on the action. However, please don't talk about the games you used to play in that manner. Actually naming the games alone might be enough to trigger someone and create nostalgia - I'm mostly talking about myself. Which games you play is irrelevant, what matters is your commitment to change.

Yeah, that thing about prostate cancer is bullshit. Do you want to recover from your sex-related addiction or do you want to have a 0.20% chance to get prostate cancer instead of 0,25%? If you really care about not getting cancer, you should eat healthy, move out of the city, watch out what meds you take, and get screening when you hit 40 and 50. Does cancer risk reduction play any other part in your decision making? I don't think so either. This is serious shit. Getting out of an addiction requires 100% commitment, and it requires you to do everything you can in order to recover. So if you think abstaining from masturbation might help you recover from porn addiction, then do that. If you think it doesn't help, then don't do that. Cancer risk is irrelevant next to something so important. I personally try to abstain from masturbation because I tried that a couple of times and I would usually get chaser effect afterwards. But I used it once recently, when I had a strong urge for porn. I first waited 9 hours though. Also, it's not like Maslow's pyramid is the ultimate revelation in terms of human psychology. It's just a theory, and one that doesn't make a lot of testable predictions as a matter of fact.

I just did a lot of stretching, and to be honest, it was a kind of procrastination. All the time I'm thinking: how can I further postpone studying? Right now my general plan for the day is to wait until I can go to sleep again. I have a list of questions for god's sake, all I have to do is take it one question at a time and sit there until I'm satisfied with the answer. And so that's what I'm gonna do right now. @WorkInProgress, the board games was actually my idea. Roomies are not a problem, we respect each other like that, so if anyone wants to go to sleep, it's silent. As for the regulating part, I'm actually very happy with tonight's results.

Successful sleep. It's 7:30. I could sleep until almost noon, but I got up just now. I went to bed a bit after 1am, because I was playing board games with my roommates. Not really sure if that was supposed to be the idea. But I was able to fall asleep almost immediately and I was able to sleep undisturbed until 6am. Which is a really long time for me. Then I couldn't fall asleep until the alarm went off, because of porn fantasy. I've been getting that every night, but just now I realized I don't even remember the one I had at new year's eve - the one that kept me up for 9 hours. So maybe I'll just run out of them at some point. No, this is good. I won't be able to keep perefect discipline every day, and it wouldn't even be good for me. What matters is that I turn off the computer at 10pm at latest and start an evening mode, where I either go to sleep or do something else that's not on the computer. And 7:30 sounds like a good hour, it's not too early and I don't wake up in the dark, but it's still early enough to feel like it's proper morning time. @WorkInProgress, thank's for the kick. Status - clean. I'm clean with everything by the way. I don't wanna keep counting days, though I am aware how long it's been. I just want to focus on the most current day and that's it. Yesterday I had some urge to eat junk food, because that's what I would do after a successful day, but I opted out of it. Too many reasons not to do it. Yesterday evening I found some papers with notes from gaming, but they didn't really create any nostalgia. Again, too many reasons. As with porn, yesterday was a day when I didn't have an urge to look at it even once. Before that, I think I had that every day - the "oh, I really wanna do this, but I can't! I can't fail the challenge for January!" Even though that's not the most important thing, but it was a good enough reason to control myself.

I was at a friends apartmen to work on a project and at one point we started talking about dating. To her it was all simple, she said I just have to spend time outside of my apartment with people and it will take care of itself. It's 10pm, I'm now gonna go to bed as planned.

Yup, there's the problem - going to bed is easy, the getting up part is hard. Whenever I'm supposed to get up early but I don't absolutely have to, I completely ignore the commitment, I don't even remember it. The other problem is that if i go to sleep at 10pm, I won't fall asleep, no chance. Anyway, what you said is basically the plan. Today I'll go to bed at 10-11pm, right after I get back home, and I'll see what happens. With the upcoming exams the reduced productivity isn't a good idea. But with the current pattern I have little productivity as well, and the urges are raging. I think it took me about an hour to fall asleep before this nap, even though I was very tired. I still am, but I won't go to bed again. The nap was a success, and my brain also correctly percieved it as a nap and woke me up after 3-4 hours, but now it wants another nap. I've got too much to do, so no. Anyway, thanks for the feedback, I find it helpful to hear what worked for you.