My other burdens: Vices that hindered my healing process

 

Chapter 6.
My other burdens: Vices that hindered my healing process

Masturbation hasn't been my only problem, of course. I had to face other vices that complicated my health and led me to push my luck. They are several chains that intertwine, that enhance each other, forming a malicious and very resistant alloy that disrupts my reward circuit and makes me a slave to dopamine. I have the advantage of having all my vices identified, but even so it is very difficult to leave them all at the same time and when I leave one, the others tighten more. Today I have managed to minimize my impulsive tendency to consume all these things that are bad for me, but they are still there, latent, waiting for something bad to happen to attack my mind and spirit again.

1: Social Networks

Social networks have affected me considerably in multiple aspects. First of all, they create a dependency of an immediate and silent nature, it is like a subtle quicksand in which one slides one's finger without stopping, it retains you, but you are not aware of it, it is practically a hypnosis. You know you have more important things to do, you know you have to get off the couch, you know you're wasting your time and there's nothing of value on the screen, but still you keep going, and you keep hoping that the next reel or the next photo generates the chemical you're waiting for, the muffled laugh, the sterile curiosity, the inevitable temptation of the ass that is always there to take you from Instagram to Pornhub in less than a second. They also terribly affect my self-esteem, Instagram with the image, and Twitter with the importance of my words. If you don't have followers or don't feel like a hegemon, social networks can destroy the way you perceive yourself and you can become addicted to filters that will make it even more difficult to accept yourself in real life. I've come to cry for spending hours trying to take a photo where I wasn't disgusted. And I wasn't crying because I didn't like the photo,  I was crying because having to appear attractive on a social network affected me to such a tragic extent. The anxiety that comes from feeling ugly, invisible, or worthless can be a very difficult thing to deal with.

On the other hand, it is not useful for socializing either, quite the opposite, a person who happens to be talking on the networks is very likely to resort to this mechanism because in person they are terribly shy, and that is something that also happens to me.

I have tried to leave the nets many times and I can say that it is almost as hard as leaving the wank, but without that problem of feeling like you relapse when you go back in. Networks are not called networks because they connect but because they trap and consume you, they consume your attention and your time, they are designed specifically for that, so that you cannot do anything with your life and you are doped without knowing it. I can assure you that it is possible, even easier, to achieve great things for your personal development without using networks. I only find them useful to advertise a business or a project that, yes or if it requires a virtual space, but if it is for entertainment... you face a deadly trap from which it will be very difficult to escape and if it is to meet girls, the ideal girl will come when you have the confidence and ability to speak directly to her face-to-face in the real world.

 

2: fast food

Fast food is also treacherous and affects you in various ways. The first and the most obvious is in the health of your body and also your wallet, fast food that fills you rarely is cheap, and I never go for the cheapest option. The second thing is that I saw it as part of the scourge. Ordering fried chicken after masturbating and smoking marijuana was not for pleasure, but because I wanted to feel like a pig, let myself be completely carried away by hedonism and end up consciously ruining myself, with pain, more than physical, spiritual. The third thing is that annihilates your effort, because we always opt for the option that takes us less work, but that also has its consequences, already mentioned. Sometimes just for save time on cooking, it only leads us to continue with that same pattern of laziness throughout the day, as if every day was Sunday. On the other hand, the presence of meat is quite common in fast food and it did not take me long to understand that meat, especially red meat, affects willpower, makes me stupid and leaves me served on a platter to vice, to be devoured by the demon of temptation once again.

Sugar is also an enemy that I must take care of, its consumption is never enough, the body always asks you for more and when it gets tired of sugar you already know what it will ask of you.

3: Overnight

Staying awake at dawn has been my habit for 3 years. The earliest I go to bed is 2am, 1:30 if I'm lucky. It really became a very difficult habit to break. I can't remember the last time I slept at a healthy hour for at least a week.

No doubt this habit was reinforced by my consumption of pornography and marijuana, spending long nights looking at photographs and smoking marijuana have consumed my brain, I am in a state that is difficult to classify, but I know that I must alter it, because it conceals a bomb about to explode. You don't have to be a scientist to know that not sleeping at night is highly detrimental to health, I've been lucky that I can stay in bed until the afternoon, but I don't know if that can be called luck because, precisely, when being able to stay in bed late, I don't have the need to go to bed early. Also, the times that I have tried it, it was very difficult for me to sleep and I was tossing and turning until four in the morning. Many times I ended up relapsing because of that problem. Nowadays I know that the solution is to sacrifice a day of sleep to be able to go to bed tired at a normal time, but I must understand once and for all that I will not work in the best way if I continue to go to bed late at night.

I am also aware that the reason why I "decided" to stay awake at dawn is because I know that the more tired I am, the less will power I will have, so I would become a zombie so that I could relapse without any resistance. Exactly the same thing happens with marijuana.

4: Marijuana

My marijuana use has been highly problematic, especially during the pandemic.

After I broke up with Sabrina for some reason I was exposed to painful bad trips, maybe from using bad marijuana with mushrooms and exposing myself to that level of fear. But during the pandemic it was worse, I had enough drugs available to be high all day, and I kept using despite the pain. The worst thing is that due to that state of tension generated by the bad trip, I resorted to masturbation to try to distract myself or relax. And thus I was consuming my body, smoking every day, touching myself every day, and falling asleep at 4 o'clock of the morning, if I slept at all. It was a very dark and depressing time in my life.

I never knew what caused the bad trip, it's probably related to masturbation because when I don't masturbate, when I resist the urge to touch myself while high, subsequent trips are usually not painful. It's as if the pain was generated as a resource to drive me to masturbate, but I'm not sure. Today I continue to use marijuana despite having had many bad experiences and many death scares, but I would like to think that I am aware of when I should smoke and when not, and I very much appreciate the moments in which I decide to quit the habit, this one and all the previous ones that I named.

It is vitally important to make an effort to shed all these habits, but I know that it is almost impossible to uproot them all at once. Sometimes I smoke, sometimes I eat junk food, sometimes I go online for a while and sometimes I go to sleep late (this is undoubtedly the most frequent). But when I have several days of retention, and the anxiety increases, I must take care of myself much more, not less, I must not let my guard down, because any of these habits can be a path to relapse. An ass that suddenly appears in the stories, a hamburger that makes me dumb and lazy, a sleepless night that drains my energy and takes away all my willpower and a few hits of marijuana that can become a torment that only masturbation can calm.

I must be attentive, be aware and make this as easy as I can, no matter how much it seems that I am depriving myself of all the pleasures, sometimes it is necessary to be able to achieve what we most desire. The real pleasure is not in these things but in the achievements and the happiness that comes with them. I may not feel happy when I reach 90 days, but I know I will feel much stronger, healthier, more beautiful and more energized, and that should be my concept of happiness.