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I've got decent bit of experience with a few of your questions. You and I are about the same age, and I started 24/7 December of 2022, and haven't stopped since. I am working on diaper dependence / urinary incontinence, but it has been a much slower journey than I was anticipating, which I attribute a lot to my work life and the travel that I had to do in 2023. It's hard to keep up with a regimen when you don't have a consistent daily schedule. Collectively for work, I was traveling at least a week every other month last year, with colleagues on every single trip. I was able to mitigate a lot of the traveling with supplies by shipping what I needed to the hotel I was staying ahead of time, which really cut down on the needed luggage space. The biggest problem that I consistently ran into was hotels constantly misplacing my packages, despite having called ahead to confirm with what their shipping preferences are. Eventually they all found the box that I had sent, but it wasn't without some anxiety. That being said, once I had my supplies in hand, it really had been just like at home with my changing schedule. The other hard part I had with hotels is that no matter how many times I would stick my garbage bag of diapers (always in black concealed garbage bags, with nothing for the maids to touch and usually never more than a few days worth) right next to the other garbage cans, but probably half the time they wouldn't take it, unless I put a note that's strictly called it out as garbage. It was really more annoying than anything else. All in all, it really just meant more logistics ahead of my traveling and I was fine 90% of the time. Up until a few months ago, I was seeing a therapist as well for a few reasons, but this was one that I also brought up with them and they were very supportive. Their biggest thing is that it's not disruptive to your life, it's something that you want/need, and it makes you feel more like you at the end of the day. I had a positive experience, I know that's not always the case for everyone, but you won't know until you put yourself out there. If they aren't concerned for you and your well-being, then you might need to look into other therapists. Ultimately, if you get to the point where you know it's what you want, own it. The 12-month program, while it has a few parts that need to be updated, has a lot of really good insight to the mental side and that there is a "before" and a "after", and as long as you are comfortable and know that it is something you want to do, go full into it, accept that there will be points that you may have to start again because of frustration, but don't let it deter you if you know it's the right path for you. It really does just take practice. My last philosophy on it is that I was not going to let it get in the way of going out and having fun with friends, family, and other daily activities that I'm used to. In order to do those things, you just need to think ahead of time about how you are going to approach the situation, prep as best as you can, and adjust for the next time if something isn't working out. I have had a few outings where I forgot to prep extra diapers and have had a cut those nights a little shorter than I would have liked, but it hasn't stopped me and I won't let it. Over this last year I was able to develop good practices that worked for me with tools that let me feel more confident in situations, but it took a little trial and error

I feel like ABU is doing this as well. I have no proof other than I remember being able to fit into a medium 5 or so years ago and now I feel like I'm busting at the waistband with a medium. I've gained a little bit of weight but it hasn't fluctuated that much over the recent years.

I've thought about that a time or two, and really have only tried it once. I hadn't worked out a good management system for when I wake up and have to deal with the wet diaper, but I know there's a few different ways with diaper pales. I'll give it another shot, but I only have a couple of diapers so there's definitely some more investment needed.

Update #4 I’m two months behind my update. If I’m being honest, I’d say that once the daily journals started falling by the wayside, my progress had started slipping as well. Work has been a huge factor in my ability/desire to journal about my progress, but I haven’t given up on my goal. I’ve had a good conversation recently that has really helped solidify my path. The short version is that I had been subconsciously processing what I felt was guilt/hypocrisy in turning incontinent. What I mean is that, after a couple of hurdles that life threw at me, I started questioning if I should go back. During those struggles, in the back of my mind, I know that I could always turn the car around and stop this journey but that’s not what I wanted. The hypocrisy part came into play as my brain acknowledges that there are people out there who don’t have a choice in there matter, and the problem of finding supplies when I needed them made me question my journey. I spoke with my therapist about my point of view on this and she pushed back on me to ask “why does is matter that someone else needs diapers for one reason and you need them for another?” After some more talking, the self-care point was made, and it was hard to argue against that. For me, being incontinent and being in diapers was my way of caring for myself and at the end of the day, I’m not taking any resources away from anyone or hurting anyone else in the process. These were things that I thought I had talked myself into before, but it was before I had the “scare” of not having supplies for a week and not knowing what to do about it. Since that conversation with my therapist, I’ve found myself much more relaxed in knowing that I still have a support group in my corner, and it really truly is only me that is majorly affected. So I’ve been able to continue to march forward and had felt the motivation again to start writing about my journey. The progress: Hasn’t felt like much, but progress has been made. I have noticed that I do wet myself more quickly when standing, and in some situations, but I still am finding difficult to release while I’m lying in bed, unless I’m looking at my phone. For a while, I was able to stop, think about the feeling when I consciously knew I had to go, and could put my mind into a spot where I felt specifically the “thinking-doing.” The results where I would wet my diaper, either full release or several smaller ones, but it still took some time to wet, and I fear every morning that I’m taking too long and reversing any progress made, by letting my bladder expand more that I should let it. This inevitably leads to me overthinking my control and my subconscious takes over to prevent me from having accidents. Hurdles aside, I have re-constituted my foundation of needing to be incontinent, I now actually believe myself when I say “I’m incontinent.” It doesn’t feel like a “fake-it until you make-it” situation anymore, and that’s a level of acceptance that I thought I had, but really was subconsciously fighting it. I am incontinent, and I’ve never felt more normal than I do now!

That was a similar recent purchase for me. I bought a couple of these (basically the same thing) a couple of weeks ago: https://www.llmedico.com/garywear-active-brief-adult-diaper-cover/ And they've already saved me a couple of loads of laundry

It's definitely one of the biggest hurdles in my opinion too. My wife has actually had a long history with nocturnal enuresis and had been wetting the bed since she was in her single digits. Since she met me, her diaper selection improved dramatically (?) but occasionally her it would still leak. Knowing this was a possibility, we've had our mattress in a waterproof sheet since we've been together and it's removed the fear of bed damage, which works for the both of us. Recently though, I have come to add an additional for myself with a reusable bed pad underneath the fitted sheet. It really keeps the leaks localized to a specific area, and does a great job of preventing puddling.

Hello and welcome! I had to partake in some IT work a couple of years ago, and even for the short time I did that, I have much more sympathy for those in the trenches! Being able to do it diapered though made it a lot better

Based on how stubborn my body is, I expect the journey to take longer than a year. Anything less is just a bonus. Thanks for also sending a link to that article. A lot of solid health information in there and education. Even though that's 99% the opposite of the goal, it's very informative of what's going on with different parts of the anatomy.

Absolutely the first step. What's weird for me was that back in January, I was strangely able to wake up consistently on schedule, lay in bed, take a few minutes to relax and then wet. In February, I couldn't get myself to wakeup, or to relax enough without distraction. A couple nights ago was the first night I woke, did my routine and went back to bed. My guess is work-stress related

@Craig That is a hormone I've surprisingly never heard of. I'm glad you were able to turn lemons into lemonade, but I'm sorry you had to start out that way. Practice, practice, practice. I can hear my coaches from all of my sports teams growing up and I luckily get to have a chuckle now to it's application ?. I think I'm still in the "figuring it out" phase, which once I do, it will then become the consistent mode. Last night I already had a huge improvement of waking, wetting, and going back to sleep, than I have had in weeks. Making baby steps back!

I personally think the word 'brief' is the odd-name out and would confuse more people than not, even when prefaced with 'incontinence'. I know discussions here and on other sites have been brought up many times before on this topic, but I still am approaching it seemingly the same method as how you laid it out, only I have used the word 'protection' in leu of 'brief'. I'm curious how many more people in my life I will need to explain the concept of Incontinence to ? I know it's getting better as time goes on, but I would hope that in this day and age, there is a better understanding by the majority of "wow, this person just shared something embarrassing and very personal about themselves, this is an 'off limits' topic with other people." That's my hope anyway. So far, so good. Hopefully your sister's boyfriend was in the supportive and affirming category!

This is something that I have not been keeping a good habit of. I keep timing my nighttime change to be right at bedtime, but I think I'm going to need to move it up an hour or so. Patience is definitely a virtue, and I have to keep reminding myself that I'm still early in the process in comparison to the whole journey

Update #3 (3/4/23) It’s been a busy month in all aspects of my life, but the highlights here include an understanding partner, dietary changes, work travel, and coming out to friends. Big update and a big read Sorry to start off on a sad note, and I wont go into the full details of the story, but my wife and I had a miscarriage earlier in February and I had been juggling that with everything else. What helped each of us get past it was each other, and talking with several friends who had gone through the same thing. It’s a lot more common that what I had imagined. It doesn’t make it hurt less but there is comfort knowing that others do know what you’re going through. The part that relates to my journey is that after we found out she was pregnant and before the miscarriage, I had the straight forward question with her if she was still ok with me becoming incontinent while we become parents and would have a child in the house. She had actually already considered that question long before she knew she was pregnant (by months), and she still came to the same supportive conclusion that she had before. This was a huge mental burden that I didn’t really know I had until I was in the situation. I knew I was fine with it because it's just what I really want for myself, but I was glad to hear that there wasn’t any further concern on her end. *Mild-graphic descriptions ahead* Shifting gears into dietary findings, I had been experiencing mid constipation for the better portion of January and I needed to find a way to get relief from it. During the constipation spells, I would eventually be able to have a BM, but that was after week+ stints of trying and not being able to go. I did a couple of key things that I had thought I was doing right before, but clearly wasn’t. First, I noticed the fact that despite me drinking upwards of 40oz of water a day and another 24oz by night, I was always drinking filtered water from either our fridge or the filtered water at work. I was missing out on key electrolytes. I shifted to tap-water with ice in both locations, and supplementing some liquid intake with either an electrolyte drink of some kind, or more recently, coconut water. This was a big fist step into finally feeling movement in my stomach again. The second thing I added, was more fruit and veggitables into my diet. I thought I was getting enough fiber with the grains that I had been eating, but adding those two additional pieces bumped the “contraction” feeling more. Finally, I started added more yogurt into my morning breakfast routine. Normally that would make me more constipated, but I think with the added biotics, it’s actually helped correct some of the environment in my gut. The bit that seems to have really now shifted for me, was that before 24/7 I was a 3 times-a-week regular. Now, it’s starting to become more on the daily, and the same of BMs are becoming smaller. This seems to track with what the 12 month program says should happen, along with what others have mentioned, but I still feel like there’s a ways to go to be more consistent with timing. The nice thing with becoming more regular again, is that it has relieved some of the tension in being able to release urine, that I was feeling during the last half of June and a majority of February. Bedwetting has become somewhat less difficult again, but it hasn’t helped too much during this part of my day. /mild-graphic descriptions Since the last update, I have opened up to a close friend, who is transitioning herself, and it felt pretty good to talk about it with someone else, however slightly it was. The odd part is that I actually had to explain what incontinence was. It doesn’t and wouldn’t surprise me that not everyone in the world knows and understands all of the details of incontinence, but usually there is some familiarization of at least the concept which is where my surprise was. I explained the simple concept of IC to her and she understands. I felt OK coming out to her with the true reason for wanting to become IC, mostly due to a least a certain level of mutual understanding that we don’t always feel like we are ourselves. That’s not to infer that each of us are struggling with the same issues, especially in the social context, but there is somewhat a level of understanding there. She was kind and supportive about it, it hasn’t made anything awkward between the two of us and we’ve actually shared a bit more about each other than we had in the long history of friendship. Work has been especially busy this past month (hence the delay in update). But I did go on a short business trip with a couple of coworkers and colleagues. This was not my first business trip wearing 24/7. This was my first trip having this level of dedication to being incontinent/diaper-trained though. Knowing that we had a busy schedule and where going to be moving around from place to place, I had to plan ahead accordingly. Since I had developed a good changing schedule, I knew about how many diapers and supplies to pack and when I would be in need of a change. The hard part was finding the bathrooms/opportunities to do so. One of the things about this trip was that one of my coworkers is also a friend outside of work. Because of this, I knew there was a potential for an ally in my journey. Having failed to find the right time/place ahead of the trip to have the conversation with them about needing to wear “protection”, I did find the time on the trip to have that one on one. This person is very much a people person and cares about the individuals around them. Knowing this, I knew I would likely have an easy time coming out to them and when I did, they were as supportive and understanding as I would have thought and hoped they would be. In addition to what I had told them, which was that for health reasons I will be needing to wear “protection” from now on, and he had actually been picking up on a couple of subtleties that something like this might have been up. He noticed several times that I would come back from the bathroom with my backpack (where I keep my supplies), where that was not usual before. The part that I didn’t really put two and two together, was when I was trying to sneak away to go and change, they wouldn’t make any comments and even during the trip there was an instance that they offered to take a few things off my hands, when I mentioned that I needed to use the bathroom and that I would meet up with the group in a few. After I came out to them, they offered any kind of support I felt I needed, which felt like a huge weight (that granted I had put on my shoulders) had been lifted. It was now known by a friend/coworker, and it wasn’t a big deal, and has made taking breaks for diaper changes at work, much less stressful. In summary it was a big month with a lot of things happening. In the more recent days, since I’ve become somewhat regular again with BMs, finding the ability to relax has been a little bit easier. I’m still discovering that I had a tremendous mental blocker when it comes to wetting while in a group setting, but I’m making incremental progress towards getting over that. Another thing that has helped, has been whenever I feel the urge to need to pee, I internally reaffirm with myself that I am incontinent and I can’t hold it in. I’m starting to actually somewhat believe that, now that I’ve been at it for two months and it seems to be helping, little by little. Bedwetting seems to be taking several steps backwards, in regards to waking up at a consistent time, actually being able to wet without standing up or looking at my phone, and falling back to sleep if I can even wet. Bedwetting will be my white whale. The last interesting piece for this update, is that I will, in a few days, release my childhood chronic constipation story. I don’t know how many others will be able to relate to any or all of my experience, but a piece of research I ran into just recently, is a condition called Anismus. Looking at a couple of medical websites, it describes very well a lot of things that have been going on in my digestive system and it could have been very easily been cause by my childhood battle. I’m going to do some more research into it and see if it’s something worth following up with my doctor about. If I do, it’ll be the first time to have the conversation of “I’m intentionally going incontinent” with them, so I’m guessing that it’ll be a slightly longer conversation than usual.

I must have a unique bladder because I don't know how ya'll lose more with alcohol, when the exact opposite seems to happen to me. I think I've learned a few things backwards in life, which honestly would explain a couple of things. Weirdly, whenever I play games or shoot darts, alcohol loosens me up and relaxes me quite a bit, but it seems that I put whatever "tension" I have back into my pelvic area. All of that to say, super jealous! Oh man have I been feeling that this month! Only month two officially in, but the changes this month seem exponetially smaller in comparison to even the first month. I know you and others have talked about reduction in over time in quantifiable changes, but I wasn't expecting a huge slow-down out of the gate. I don't recall reading anything about it for your journey, but did you experience anything similar at the start?

Sounds like you have better clothing recycling programs in Norway than what we have over here. Last I checked with our donation centers, they themselves don't have any direct programs like that but they do exist independently. That's a solid idea! I'm about out of patches and I've her of people doing that before, I think I'll sacrifice a few to finally get that a... shot ? This would be the option that I would prefer to go with; Give these to someone who'd actually need em and use em. I'll have to take another peak, because it surprised the heck out me that we don't have at least one of these places around Seattle. Oh man, my wife would actually get a kick out that. I think I've allocated another couple for her next gift I get her ?