Being stuck with addiction

[5tranger]

Hi guys,

as for many of you this site has been a life changer for me. I've never been a seducer and I've only slept with three girls till my 31st birthday.
Ever since I started reading GC half year ago the game has changed, I started sleeping with girls, getting experience, approaching, being more successful step by step.
I grew some pretty good confidence and started to be really driven and happy with myself. I started to attract girls I would never dare to even look at.

There was a huge motivation behind this: A girl I loved. We were in a relationship and had issues — I can see clearly now all the mistakes I made as a man that led to a breakup — it's been 8 months now.
We took time to think about it and we promised ourselves that we may give it another chance once I come back from my trip to Canada.

In August I got back to realize she's with someone else and the relationship is over. It hit me hard although I tried to prepare for it. I cut contact with her and decided I had to move on.
Just keep my habits and everything's going to be fine.

But I have slowly ceased to see any meaning behind my actions. I just couldn't make myself go on.
There's an important thing to say — I am an addict. Once I don't have a girl I can be addicted to, I switch to computer games and porn.
Being pragmatic I see there's a lot of energy and drive I take from being addicted to a girl and I know it's in fact my energy.
But I can't seem to find a way to make this work in my favor — I've lost the one I loved and even if I found another this mindset is going to kill any attraction she may have towards me.

Right now the only thing that makes at least some sense to me now is work. I can have pussy any day I want, but this doesn't help me any way. It makes me feel empty. I can go grab a beer with my friends, but I feel more and more introverted and anti-social. I am fighting battles with my inner self, considering it a success when I get out of bed. But there's not much energy left after I do my work, I just get back home and masturbate to reward myself that I'm able to at least keep going.

I feel like the gap between the life I live and the life I want is too huge. I can't see how to stay motivated in long run – my goals seem too far. The work on my fundamentals is just too overwhelming.
I know what kind of woman I want in my life, but there's no way such a woman would want me — right now I am unstable, weak, poor. I can attract girls as that outlaw I am right now but this is not something I want in the long run. I know the kinds of men I want to be friends with, but I am lightyears out of this league — I do not meet them and even if I did I would feel inferior to them.
Alhtough I have a couple of female friends, I feel I need a man friend who would see the world at least a little bit similar as I do — but there's no one right now, all my male friends are quite cynical.

Guys, I need to find a way out of this. I do not want to live like this.

 

[Mr.Rob]

I think just about all of us on GC have really huge gaps between where we are in life compared to where we want to be. And when we manage to close those gaps we get new ones to replace them with.

As far as your situation goes I don't see much options.

You can keep doing what you're doing (which you don't apparently like/lowers your self esteem).

Or you can slowly start to take baby steps to turn your ship around and get to a better place (which you may not think will work but like I said whats your other option. It will also raise your self esteem woooot always nice).

A lot of us started out thinking it was too far. Shit I've been learning seduction for a year 1/2 + and I the concept of having a girlfriend is still pretty foreign to me but fuck dude I'm just happy to be taking action and getting closer even if I can't see the target in sight.

Learn to take pleasure in taking action... it's all you have sometimes.

 

[Whizzy]

Think of it this way, without aspiring to be more and having these gaps, how are we supposed to improve?

 

[Drck]

Hi 5tranger,

There are several important issues to address:

First, addiction is not easy to overcome. Many people are addicted to different things: Alcohol, sweets, cigarets, food, games, gambling, sex/porn, ..., you name it. A person basically does something and he is rewarded by feelings of pleasure for it. The more he feels good the more he wants to repeat the same behavior, but at the same time his brain gets desensitized to those pleasurable feelings, so basically he has tendencies to repeat that pleasurable actions with more frequency and intensity. You start watching porn once a week, and it is all great. Then twice a week, three times, and after a while you realize that you spent hours every day doing just that. It eats your life, you don't have motivation or energy to do anything else. You may try to stop, perhaps just for couple of days, but then the desire for pleasurable feelings comes back even with stronger intensity.

Addiction to XYZ physically restructures your brain (on neuronal level), it is considered a disease. In a sense we are all addicts as we all love pleasure in XYZ and we want to do things that make us feel great. So you are actually addicted to great feelings (watching porn and masturbates makes you feel really great), not the porn itself. When you look at statistics, there are lots of adults who watch porn and are most likely somehow addicted. When you e.g. go to church and look around all those nice, honest and faithful christian men, problably good half of them watch porn on regular basis, and the other half would never admit it. Go figure, you are far away from being alone. There is quite a large number of females who also watch porn.

One of the incorrect ways people attept to deal with addiction is to avoid the current behavior, totally stop it. It works for some but not for most. If you just stop watching porn and not focus on other pleasurable behaviors, the desire to feel great will be too intensive and you will relapse. So you can't really stop the desire, it is encoded in your brain, but you can replace it, at least up to some point.

The problem with porn/sex is that those are the highest pleasurable feelings we can experience in life, therefore it is not so easy to replace them with other behaviors.

So maybe you want to deal with it on a rational level: Not stop totally but decrease, e.g. from every single day to every two-three days, then once a week or two weeks, get it under control first. At the same time find replacement - girls, sport, take new classes in school, focus on investment and saving money... Something that makes you feel good and is productive.

Try to identify the exact behavior and then change it: You go to work, you get tired, you go home - and turn on the porn. That is a certain behavior you may try to change, for example, go to work but then don't go directly home. Go to library, invite a friend out, go to fitness, see some movie, get a partime job and save extra money - spent your time every day on doing something productive that will enrich your life....

Keep a journal: This week it was 7 days a week. Next week 6 times. Then 4 or 3 times, the perhaps just 1x time.... By keeping a journal you can monitor your behavior and it is much easier to change it.

Another important thing you mentioned is depression. You go out with a girl, you love her... It doesn't work out, she has someone else - and you fall in depression. You feel miserable about yourself, you want to feel great - and you turn on the porn. Which will make you feel great temporalily, but then you fall even into deeper depression. So, basically you have to deal with depression as well, which is not easy. Accept the rejection, there is a great article on GC about rejections, just read it many times, memorize it. Hopefully it will de-attach you from that particular girl. Seek a professional help if you can't get over it, they may help you. It is much better to get out of depresiion with help within couple of weeks rather than years dealing with it on your own....

Deal with depression the same way like above. Try to do something productive every day. You won't notice much difference in a couple of days, but if you do it for several weeks it will accumulate and will make you feel better. Create new habits (e.g. go to fitness). You can also keep journal, e.g. write down every day 2 new positive things to be greatful for in your life. You won't see a difference in 2-3 days, but if you do it for a month that will be a huge list of positive things in your life. Keep focusing on that list, keep focusing on positivity.

Next thing is clinging. You may think you can be happy only with a certain type of girls (even if it is any girl and not the particular one). If you can't cling to that girl you cling to games or porn. Try to be more independent, try to be more happy on your own. You don't need girl(s) to be happy, you don't need games, work or money to be happy,, you don't need luxury things to be happy, and you don't need porn to be happy. You can be happy without anything external, you can be perfectly happy just the way you are. Learn to meditate and relax, perhaps read about spirituality. In a sense, all of us are in this world 'alone' - some of us try to avoid the emptiness by clinging to others or to things, some of us try to escape the emptiness by being overly active and achieving different goals, and others are trying to accept it on spiritual level... Clinging is not good for relationships anyway, girls are usually seeking guys who are more independent....

Another thing, try to decrease your expectations. There is a huge gap in your life because you are expecting to be at level XYZ, while in reality you are on level ABC. So maybe you don't need XYZ because it is frankly impossible, but you could be fine with more realistic KLM - which, with enough effort, you can reach in reasonable time frame...

Last thing, your mind set. Your mindset is too negative, you are beating yourself down: "I know what kind of woman I want in my life, but there is no way such a woman would want me - right now I am unstable, weak, poor,..., I'm light years away..." This is a huge negative belief. Change it to more positive and constructive ways:

"I know what kind of woman I want in my life and that is really great because most guys don't know what they want. I am doing my best every day to get such girl". "I used to be unstable, weak and poor but now I am working hard on improvement, every single day - I am working on stability by doing ABC, I am gaining strength by doing DEF, and I am becoming richer and richer financially by saving GHI per month. I am also working on Abundance Mentality. All of these are great things and I am moving forward with my life in a speed of light".

So, basically create some reasonable, constructive and positive plan for your future, focus on it and keep working on it persistantly day after day. Write it down, keep journal so you can monitor the progress. Several weeks/months from now you will look back at your past life, compare it to your current life, and you will see the huge progress, huge steps forward....

Hope it helps

 

[Lotus]

Already a lot of good stuff said.

Do you work out or exercise at all?


When you work out your body released endorphins and many many studies have shown the positive effects of the endorphins/exercise relationship.

http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/exercise-depression


Also if you guys are as important to each other as you make it seem. She is probably in a rebound relationship. Eventually it will end, make sure that when it does you are a 10x better man then you were. Fix your issues. She loved you for a long time with the issues, you would be irresistable to her if you fix those things.