New Here - My Story - New Life - Withdrawal Symptoms

[NewBeginnings1982]

Thank you to anyone who is going to take the time to read my post.

Long story short, I've been masterbating since middle school. Over the last several years I've been masterbating to porn almost daily and sometimes I would masterbate 2-4 times a day. Seemed like a good stress reliever to get away from things. I'm 29 and married and I've recently talked to my wife about what's been going on. She knew that I masterbated, but just didn't know how much. Before I decided to quit cold turkey, everything seemed to be ok in my head. Always upbeat and outgoing. Only a day or two after having one of those days where I masterbated like 3 or 4 times, I started to feel weird in my head. I'm a worrier so I started trying to self diagnose my self. Anxiety runs in my family so I immediately started thinking the worst. I scheduled a physical, but I did not talk to my doctor about my self diagnosed addiction to porn and masterbating as I was embarassed. My doctor ran a full blood panel and everything came back perfect. Listened to my heart and did stuff involved with a physical and said everything seemed fine and that I was probably dealing with anxiety or panic attacks. After I stopped masterbating I would have moments at work when things got tough I would start to sweat and get these weird feelings in my head. In time they would pass. In the back of my mind I thought it was due to me stopping masterbating or looking at porn, but I was just going with what the doctor said. He put me on 10mg of Lexapro for anxiety and also gave me .5mg of Xanax for instances where I would feel a panic attack comming on or if I wanted to get through the day feeling relaxed. After 5 days on Lexapro my wife definitely noticed a change in me that I seemed really tired and out of it...and frankly I did. The Xanax seemed to help and make me feel better. My doctor has switched me to Celexa as he thinks the Lexapro might have been too strong as how pourly it was making me feel and making it hard to sleep. This has all happened over the last 14 days. I am proud to say that over the last 14 days I've only masterbated once and that was about 6 days ago. It was a quick 5 minute session to see if it made me feel better, but it didn't. It seems like the longer it has been since I've masterbated last, the better I'm feeling...but I still get these feelings in my head. Like an adrenaline rush or something. I will have moments where I'm lying down on the couch or bed and can feel my heart beating more so than normal. Maybe thats my anxiety.

Anyways, my wife and I found out we are going to be expecting a couple weeks ago and thats when the light went on for me to make a life change. I've been working out daily for the last 2 weeks along with only masterbating once in those 2 weeks. My motivation to be a great dad someday is what is making it "easy" for me to stop masterbating. I use the term "easy" loosely though as this isn't an easy process.

To help put my mind at ease...could how I be feeling be because of me not masterbating so much and pretty much stopping? I understand that when you masterbate so much your brain gets used to things and maybe my "levels" are out of balance.

Will I ever get better? Is there anything I can do to other than just to stop masterbating?

I could really use some help and never thought I would be doing this as far as getting help...but its time.

Thank you.

[Rockinastorm]

Thank you for joining, NewBeginnings! I feel connected to you already because you posted here the very same day. I am really nervous about this whole thing too, but I think we are in the right place. everyone seems very happy and loving here. One thing to note is that people tend to use P and MB as acronyms (there are others as well) they are easy to guess, but some are shorthand, some are to bypass internet filters and also to try to prevent anyone from relapsing.
I am sorry to hear about your withdrawal symptoms. I wish I had some advice for you but I havent experienced anything like that (yet). I am sure someone here can help you! Hopefully this site will ease your anxiety. (I have abnormal amounts of that as well!) Keep up on the workouts, I know those deffinately help me!

AND CONGRATS ON THE PREGNANCY!!!!

Post back often. I look forward to hearing about your story, and I think the more involved we get, the more likely we will change!

[Mac]

Hi! There NB 1982
Welcome to the wonderful world of TTF.
What brings us all here is a nasty,nasty thing, but once here you will be glad you found us.
I am not sure what to tell you about the weird feeling you are getting ( panic attacks). I know for me i never experienced anything like you are describing, but who knows, all kinds of weird things happen when you start to suffer withdrawl.I am sure someone else will answer you here that maybe had some of the same symptons.
Do yourself of favour, come here and grab onto everything you can. There are alot of people here that have a wealth of knowledge about this terrible addiction and are always willing to share thoughts and ideas. Like you have just done, come here and ask questions, read some of the other PA's journals. It's a good idea sometimes to go back to the start of someones journal to see what they did back at the beginning
The main thing that you need to do right now, is set yourself a plan of how you will stay away from your addiction. Identify the vulnerabilities and triggers that typically cause you to turn to P and MB and know what to do if you find yourself headed in a bad direction. You have to break the cycle by having a plan in place that won't allow you to follow your usual path.
The guidance and support that you can receive here are only limited by how much you want to grab onto.
I pray that you can stay strong and continue moving in the direction you have started in.
Use the motivation of a new life coming into your life to your advantage. You don't want this lousy addiction to distract you from the miracle you have coming.

All the best
Mac

[NewBeginnings1982]

Thank you to those that have read my story since I posted last night. I wanted to log in this morning and share that last night I had a very vivid erotic dream. Normally when this would happen I would MB in the morning thinking about the dream. This morning I did not! I also deleted files from my computer completely so that I could not access them anymore. I found by reading someones posts that that was a must to make sure I continue on my journey.

I am going to beat this PA! I just keep telling myself that. The toughest times are when I'm home alone. I work from home sometimes and sometimes I get quite bored. In the past that's when its the worst. We will see how things go, but if I have the urge to MB or look at P...maybe I'll try substutiting that with playing xbox or something to keep my mind off things when work slows down.

Great to have a place to share my thoughts other than talking to my wife. Thanks again! I will continue to post about my journey.

[IN NEED OF HELP]

I am going to beat this PA! I just keep telling myself that. The toughest times are when I'm home alone. I work from home sometimes and sometimes I get quite bored. In the past that's when its the worst. We will see how things go, but if I have the urge to MB or look at P...maybe I'll try substutiting that with playing xbox or something to keep my mind off things when work slows down.

Great to have a place to share my thoughts other than talking to my wife. Thanks again! I will continue to post about my journey.

New Beginnings
Welcome to TTF.
It sounds like you are already off to a good start in freeing yourself from this addiction. I am very happy to see that you already took the steps, to delete all the files, that you have on your computer. This my friend is a must, and you did the right thing.
I like that you already have a plan in what you are going to do when the temptations comes to you while you are home alone. It is very important, that you do replace those thoughts when they come to you.
You will come to see that there are many more changes that you are going to need to make in your life. the best way to fight this addiction, is by not allowing yourself to still be the same person that we were when we are using. Make any needed change in your life. you will need to lean what you are going to do, when you are outside your home, and a trigger comes to you. It is all about changing our HEARTS.
We are all addicted to the hardest addiction to get over, but we can all be free from this, if we work our recovery plan, and never relax in our plan. this addiction is everywhere that we go, no matter what we do in our lives, this addiction is always lurking around trying to get into us.
So now is the time to find all the weapons that you are going to need, in order to fight off this beast that is trying to destroy our lives. you can do this. you can come out a winner in this, but you are going to need to work your butt off to get it done

I do wish you the best in your recovery. Please just do what needs to be done to win this battle.
Start a journal here when you can, and write in it as much as you can, so we can all see how you are doing. Let us know what your struggles are, so we can see if we can help you in any way. you are not here alone my friend, there are many here to help you fight this battle. I hope to see you soon

Good luck to you