Pipster's Journal

[pipster22]

Yikes.
Its extremely late so i am a bit tired to write a lot.. but here's the short version.

I have been trying to quit for about 6 months, but i have never been able to get past 30 days; and now, I am starting over yet again at day zero. I am so afraid I will not be able to shake this addiction. In the past, i have always thought of myself as a very strong willed person.. however I am now discovering I am not.

I am in the second half of my senior year of high school and although I have amazing friends, love school, and have a great family.. I am constantly feeling depresesd, lonley, and empty inside.

My cycle goes like this;
Relapse. Freak out. Be clean(and depressed) for 15-25 days. Relapse. Repeat.
What scares me the most is that no matter how many times i have tried to quit, I always end up in the same position.

I have been on and off reading this website for many months now. The reason I am here is to hopefully get some personal insight into what I am doing wrong. I KNOW i need to get a therapist, however I just cannot bring myself to tell my parents. I have talked to my friends who have 'similar' issues, and while that makes me feel a little less lonley, it still has not helped to cure me of this addiction.

I will continue to post more about me and why I am here later, but if anyone has ANY insight whatsoever as to what I am doing wrong and any tips how to help me stay clean.. that would be great :)


Goodnight for now,
Pippyyy.

[pipster22]

Today is my first clean day.
I feel like I am caught in a trap that I am never going to be able to get out of. What scares me the most is reading what other people say on this website. I read their horror stories of how porn has ruined their lives; what scares me about this is that I can see myself in every one of their situations..
I know if I do not end my addiction to porn soon, it will take over my life. Although I have only been strongly addicted to porn (using every day) for about 6-8 months, I have been casually using it for about two years.

what unfortunatley makes my situation even harder is that i just got a laptop of my own.
I literally feel like I am a marijuanna addict who just discovered crack or heroin. Before I got my own laptop, I was using the internet on my cell phone to view only pictures, but whenver I wanted - I thought this was heaven. However now that I have my own laptop and have been browsing websites with videos, I now realize what I have been missing all this time.
I now have absoloutley no desire to view the photos on my cell phones browser, its a joke to me now that i know what is really out there.

So obviously, this makes the situation a lot more difficult. What I fear the most, is that I won't be clean by March. I started using porn heavily, as an escape from life, a year ago in March. I do not know how I will be able to live with myself knowing what started out as a simple escape from life has turned into what i know will be life-long addiction. I know the longer I let this addiction take control of my life the harder it will be to fully quit.



As of today:
I had my p/mb session not even 12 hours ago, and I almost just relapsed yet again. However, before I was able to get to the laptop I decided I was just going to mb without the p, to get rid of all my urges. Now, while I know mb is much much much less addicting that mb WITH porn, I know mb can be addicting too.
Is it wrong that when i feel myself about to relapse with p I will try to just mb to rid myself of all the urges?
Unfortunatley, at this point in my life stress is my biggest problem, which I have a lot of due to school work.
i have also discovered that i have a lot more anxiety these days.

Whenever I am doing my homework I try to have my laptop/cellphone as far away from me as I can, to prevent any quick escapes from my homework and stress..

I have tried to quit over 20 times since last march (i started TRYING to quit & acknowleding my problem around may). I honestly do not know how many times I am going to be able to make myself 'quit', knowing that in 20 days all my hardwork will end up in the trashcan.

I am going to try to write on this blog as much as I can, especialyl when I am close to relapse. If anyone is reading this and has any insight for me, please feel free to write me. I would also really like to talk to someone (via this website or via other mode of communication) about my problem and just sort of have a buddy I can personally talk to when I am feeling stressed and wanting to relapse.

-Pippy

[Charly22]

One day at a time. Don't look at the yard of leaves that need raking, just one area at a time. You already got one day under your belt, and you survived. Stay focused and keep coming back here. Not sure what I can say to you, being a SO to a PA, I know there's alot to learn, and alot you will cheat yourself out of by allowing the addiction to keep hold. Just wanted to say that I admire you for being here, and the desire to rid it from life deserves recognition!!! Kudos!

[Bird-boy]

Use the resources that are here on this website to your advantage--RIGHT AWAY. Besides just the forums and starting a Recovery Journal, read the Articles, and check out the Resources. Take the steering wheel of your life in your own hands! :)

I don't know what else to say right now, but make sure you completely agree with your conscience that you need to stop. Don't feel so depressed; if you don't make yourself feel extra sad (as if you were giving yourself extra pain that you feel you deserve) then it may help break the cycle. I don't know if any of that applies to you, but it applies to me.

[pipster22]

I suppose i just need to keep going, yet again, and hope for the best. I tried to make a list of things (triggers) that i can easily avoid. IE: not using the computer late at night chatting with friends(which almost always leads down the p/mb road).

I hope I can finally win this time.

[rugbysteve]

Pippy,
Hi and welcome to TTF. I'm glad you found your way here. I can attest that this is a great community that has helped me greatly. Your list of triggers is a great start. One additional thing that I would suggest is to use a web filter on your laptop (K9 Web Protection is free and what I use), it also has uses as a spam blocker. While you have the password and can choose to disable it, it puts one extra hurdle between you and P. That can help a lot and perhaps it will divert you to come to the forums instead.

You can definitely win this time. Like Bird-boy said, don't let yourself get down too much. If you stumble, then pick yourself up, figure out why you stumbled and make a strategy to prevent it from happening again. The most important part is to pick yourself up and recommit yourself.

Take things one day at a time.
-steve
p.s. I would suggest moving your journal to this section: Recovery journals - TTF community forums as people tend to check that area more often.

[pipster22]

Thank you very much for your support steve. I am definetly considering getting the filter, and possibly even having my friend set the password for me so I know for sure that would stop many of my urges!

Today is my second day of being clean.
I have been here so many times I feel like it is nothing to even talk about. I barely ever relapse during the week, it always seems to be during the weekends.
I feel like I am just wasting my life away. I am never happy. I feel as though the only time I am happy, is about every 20 days or so when I relapse, for that short moment of time.
I feel like as long as I continue to relapse I am never going to be happy. If I cannot get past the awful 20-30 day marks, I will never be able to fully beat this addiction.

It's so hard because at the end of my 20-30 days, I feel like I have absoloutley no control over what I do. I tell myself "okay, I obviously have no problem, otherwise would I have been able to even get this far?" or "theres no point in doing this. if i have gotten this far, I can easily get to 60, 90, or even 120 days... why even go that far?" I feel like my brain 100% changes gears and will tell myself anything to just relapse one more time.

As of now, I am not worried of a relapse. I can easily go the first week with no problems; my problems begin on Friday at night. I am so used to just letting go and doing whatever I want then, as well as Saturday. I am trying to mentally and physically prepare myself as much as I can for this upcoming weekend because I know it will not be fun, especially because I already know I am going to be extremley stressed out with schoolwork.
Although I am very nervous, I feel sort of relieved. I feel so much more prepared to tackle this addiction. After making a list of all the things I cannot do to keep me from P (like using the comp at night) I feel like I finally may have enough strength to beat this.


All I can do right now is try to not worry too much, and prepare myself as best I can for the weekend.
I think I am going to download the K9 software to test it out for the week before I have my friend set up a password, just to make sure it doesn't block me from sites I normally browse, like facebook etc.. but after that I really think having my friend set the password up and controlling what sites I am able to visit will help immensley. However then of course there is still the problem of my cellphone with internet (which BTW, already has parental controls on it... yikes)

Well, I gotta get studying. I try to start as early as possible so I can take as many breaks as I need, to keep the stress as low as it could possibly be.

Until later,
Pippppppy

[pipster22]

well,
it's my fourth clean day and I am feeling pretty okay. tomorrow i have all my finals so i will be pretty stressed out tonight, but i know i can make it through. I am mainly worried about this weekend. weekends are the hardest times for me because there is more than usual free time. although i have decided to never use the laptop or cell phone at night, i feel like its going to be easier said than done.

it will be a nice three day weekend, which in some respects will just make things harder. the more free time, the harder it is to say no to P. I am going to try to have as little free time as I can manage, and also limit my internet use throughout the weekend.

I have realized that 95% of my relapses are "unintentional", as in .. I do not turn the computer on 'knowing' what I am going to do. as i get bored throughtout the night i begin to browse from website to website.... SOMEHOW ending up on a sketchy site, and then it will only go south from there. I am really getting nervous for this weekend, just because 9/10 times thats when I relapse.

I am going to try my absoloute hardest to stay away from browsing the web in general, I am only going to use my laptop when I need to or know exactly what i am going on for. hopefully with my new plans about how to stay away from my triggers i will be able to get through this weekend easily. I think if I do for some reason end up on my laptop late at night, it would be here writing about how hard it is not to relapse.. I guess we will have to see.

Although tonight is going to be stressful, I am at the point where I just dont even care (about the finals), which takes an imense amount of the stress off. I have good grades in each class, am accepted to the college I want to go to, and highly doubt these finals will affect my grades too much... hopefully!

Well I guess i should stop babbling and actually go study for a little bit.. hope to write back on here sometime this weekend, hopefully with good or at least positive news. Hope everyone else is finding the strength to stay clean as well. Friday is tomorrow... thank god! :)

Until later this weekend,
PIPPYYYYY

[rugbysteve]

Great news! Day four can be big. More encouraging is your realization about your triggers and how to manage them. Staying off the computer when you are just going to be randomly clicking is definitely a good idea. I have another suggestion that you may find useful. When I am going to use the computer I usually have a mental checklist of what exactly I am going to do, and when I am done I make sure to get off the computer, or at least the internet.

For instance, that checklist could look like: 1) Read a particular online comic 2) Read news articles 3) Check the deals at amazon.com, etc.

Once I have that list I know as soon as I deviate it that I am treading in dangerous waters and I know immediately to re-evaluate what my intentions are. If, say, in reading a news article it interested me in something else to look up that is ok. I will add that thing to my checklist. If, however, I have just started browsing without purpose that means my re-evaluation has to say "GET OUT." At that point, even if I am not done with my checklist I have to close the browser and do something else for a while.

It's not foolproof but having such a list keeps my mind in check. I hope the suggestion helps.

Good Luck with your finals! Get some rest tonight, a good night's sleep always helps the mind perform better the next day.
-steve

[pipster22]

Its been a few days since i have written last. basically with the end/beginning of the quarters my life has been pretty hectic and barely any time for P. It is currently my 10th clean day, which I am really excited about :)
As things are settling down and I am getting back into a more scheduled routine, I am starting to think more and more about P, which scares me. Typically, in the past, I usually get to about day 18-20 before getting any serious urges, which I am expecting to hold true now as well. I am trying very hard to stick to my new rules about no using the computer late at night/when bored. I am really excited I am already on day 10, but whenever i start thinking about it i become extremley overwhelmed; i am so scared that i will relapse yet again. all it takes its one time and all this hard work is GONE, which really scares me :( all it takes is one bad decision to stay on the computer too late at night, let your mind wander, and all you have worked for is gone and you're right back at day zero.. and honestly, i do not know if i will be able to put myself through this again. this has to be the last time.

with all my new anxiety comes a few benefits, though. i have become so much more aware of myself as well as my situation. i realize i physically and mentally cannot continue to put myself through this time after time, which gives me a lot more strength to push through. as of now, i am horrified of thinking of the approaching days. thinking of myself on the 22nd day (which was my previous relapse date) makes me sick; i just cannot win no matter what I do. if i look at P and relapse, I am obviously extremley depressed afterwards - but even if i don't relapse, i am still extremeley depressed. i know if i can beat this the depression will gradually go away, but it's just so hard thinking so far out into the future; i mean i try to take it day by day but sometimes its just so hard to not think into the future.

i guess all i can do as of now is pray and teach myself to follow my rules, before the real urges begin. i imagine i will start using this site more often within the next few weeks, considering that i have never made it past the 30 day mark and i am already on my 10th day.

If i relapse one more time, i will have been addicted to porn for a year. (my year mark would be coming up in march) and I just cannot handle that. I am so afraid that if i do relapse again, i will completely lose all motivation and just accept the addiction, again.. and then before you know it days pass you by, weeks, months, and eventually I am sure years. the last year has been the fastest year of my life, and looking back to it i feel like i was in a fog the whole time, i wasnt myself. i was there, but i didnt feel anything. i was numb; porn consumed such a huge part of my life i was not able to feel or do anything else. at some points, I could not go more than 8 hours without doing it, I cannot go back to that place.

I guess that is all for now, I hope to check back this weekend. Hope everyone is doing well, and steve -
thank you so much for all your feedback. you have some great tips which i am definetly trying to use daily :)