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Why do people here compete for excessively long streaks?

Discussion in 'Rebooting - Porn Addiction Recovery' started by NoMilkNoSugar, Sep 17, 2017.

  1. NoMilkNoSugar

    NoMilkNoSugar Fapstronaut

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    Surely, if you PMO once a week or once every other week, you no longer qualify as an addict. If people's goal here is to overcome their addiction to PMO (or a just P, or just MO), why is it so common on this forum to push it to the other extreme and aim for (say) 90days?
     
  2. Got to Overcome

    Got to Overcome Fapstronaut

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    It's a lot to do with high-speed Internet access and the seemingly endless amount of pornography available.

    Let's take the 1970's as an example. Back then, if you were interested in pornography, what were your options? You could have found an adult store and blown a week's paycheck on a variety of magazines and videos, but the more likely option is that you'd have gotten a subscription or two to a monthly magazine. So you'd get a couple of magazines a month, look through them once or twice, get bored and then think little of pornography until the next magazine arrived.

    Obviously, that all changed with the advent of high-speed Internet and the limitless amount of content one can now access. Before, users were not only limited in terms of the frequency with which they could view new content, but also in the types of genres they could view. Everything was pretty vanilla, especially by today's standards, and even though I'm sure access to more extreme genres was available, it would have taken a lot of effort to find and there wouldn't have been much in terms of supply.

    Not so now. With high speed Internet, it's all available at the click of a button, as I'm sure most of have (unfortunately) discovered. So while consumers of pornography in years past were forced to be moderate in their use, we no longer face those constraints. That being the case, most of us choose not to be moderate in our use.

    My own life is an example of this. I've tried a number of times to limit my use of porn to moderate levels. As I've now learned, it's simply not possible. The dopamine releases associated with the search for that perfect picture or video ingrain the habit so deeply that viewing pornography once a week for fifteen minutes or so no longer remains a viable option. Trying to view it in moderation always leads me back to periods of heavy use, and I'm certainly not the only one for whom this is true.

    All this is to say that while in theory your idea makes sense, it doesn't work in practice. For those of us who are considered addicts, it's going to require at least 90 days without PMO for our brains to return to whatever they were before we got into pornography and a lifetime of vigilance after that.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2017
  3. Porn do you no good. Not physically, not spirtually. It degrades you. Thats my own opinion.
     
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  4. NoMilkNoSugar

    NoMilkNoSugar Fapstronaut

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    I respect that, but still, 90 days seems like a very high and very arbitrary number. I think everybody relapses, that's just human - the hardest part is to pick yourself up, reset the counter and start again.

    In my opinion some scheduled (P)MO (if you didn't get real sex) is really great after a week or two of dry spell! It gives me the energy to stay absolutely focused during the week without thinking about PMO much. I like this community but I think people here tend to be a bit nuts when it comes to these 90 day rules (except if they have ambitions to be monks, in which case that is perfectly reasonable). Who with a normal sex drive can concentrate and focus on their work if they don't MO for 90 days? It's like people here think there only exist PMO addicts and zen monks, nothing in between.
     
  5. Veronico

    Veronico Fapstronaut

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    There's no in between. That's what you don't get. You need to forget about PMO once and for all. Your brain will ask for more once you start PMO'ing. PMO is not good at all! It fucks up your brain chemistry. You will start having sexual images all over your mind and you won't stop thinking about sex. That's why PMO is not normal and will never be.
     
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  6. MarinoBigFan1984

    MarinoBigFan1984 Fapstronaut

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  7. phwrancesco

    phwrancesco Fapstronaut

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    in my opinion a big change is possible only if you go for a long streak because it allows you to really push yourself to the limit.Peace
     
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  8. You need to give your brain enough time to "rest".
     
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  9. Who said we're competing with each other? This community struck me as everyone helping each other reach 90 days and higher, not competing with one another.

    Just because most people recommend you abstain for 90 days doesn't mean you're not going to recieve benefits along the way. From the sound of your posts, it seems like you're not ready to give up PMO, mainly the first two letters.

    The name of the game is to completely destroy the urge to watch porn and masturbate and keep the sexual activities to real people.
     
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  10. MarinoBigFan1984

    MarinoBigFan1984 Fapstronaut

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    I find a lot of all of nothing personality types in these forums as well.
     
  11. MarinoBigFan1984

    MarinoBigFan1984 Fapstronaut

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    A lot of people in the forums also think a reboot can solve every problem on the face of the earth which is not true.
     
  12. MarinoBigFan1984

    MarinoBigFan1984 Fapstronaut

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    My reboots have lasted 7, 14, 26, and 28 days which a relapse day in between each 1. Even though these are short reboots to most people I feel much more in control of myself and my desires.
     
  13. RecoveringFapaholic

    RecoveringFapaholic Fapstronaut

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    First of all, as @MarinoBigFan1984 said "it's not a contest." Nofap is about overcoming PMO addiction. There's no trophy for achieving the longest streak. The freedom from PMO that comes after you reboot is your trophy. Second, 90 days is not "excessively long," it's only a tiny fraction of your lifetime. A person who live to be 80 years has lived 960 months. 3 months or 90 days is approximately 0.3% of their lifetime. 0.3% of your lifetime free from PMO is not an "excessively long" time. Besides, PMO is not necessary nor healthy, and we should ideally spend 100% of our lives away from it.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2017
  14. MarinoBigFan1984

    MarinoBigFan1984 Fapstronaut

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    When you begin the process every minute can feel like a week. Telling me the above isn't exactly supportive in the moment. All or nothing works for some but not everybody.
     
  15. Got to Overcome

    Got to Overcome Fapstronaut

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    I see where you're coming from, but as someone who has dealt with PMO addiction for over twenty years, I can't disagree more strongly. Perhaps there are some who can watch porn once every week or two for a brief period of time without ever experiencing the desire to seek out more extreme types of material or increase the amount of time spent watching it, but they're definitely in the minority.

    That's due to the nature of pornography. We're so attracted to it due to the way it releases dopamine. Of course, when we just get into it, perhaps just looking at women in swimsuits for fifteen minutes will release significant amounts of it. However, we're going to get bored with such images before long, which will require us to seek out more exciting imagery and/or spend longer amounts of time watching it. That's the reason so many of us have descended into extreme genres.

    Therefore, those of us who have allowed ourselves to get to this place are going to need a long period of time before our brains can recover and our sexual desires can get somewhat close to what they were before we got into pornography. A lot of people feel like that begins to happen at the ninety day point, though it will differ based on age/amount of time one has spent watching pornography/the types of pornography one has gotten into. Regardless of the amount of time it takes the individual, the point is that through abstaining from pornography for an extended period, the brain can return to what it was before it was warped by pornography.

    At that point, some people feel it's acceptable to MO once or twice a month. However, this is something we must be careful about, as there will never be a time in our lives when we'll be 100% free from the desire for pornography. As someone who has gone periods of a year or more without only to return once I'd let my guard down, I can unfortunately attest to the truth of the above statement.

    With all that said, I don't doubt that there are some individuals who can consume pornography in moderation. But once again, my point is that these people are very much in the minority, and for the vast majority of people, complete avoidance is the only option.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2017
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  16. Andy Valen

    Andy Valen Fapstronaut

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    Because if you do it once you do it again and again until something else kicks some needed sense into you, for most of us once a week certainly is too much, so is once a month, a year, a decade, a lifetime..... We come here to quit, no to take away some stupid title or reduce frequency.
     
  17. MarinoBigFan1984

    MarinoBigFan1984 Fapstronaut

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    As I've said before NoFap to me is an experimental approach to help my ED caused by anti depressant use and the little pills not working. That's still my main focus.
     
  18. nofepper

    nofepper Fapstronaut

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    my thoughts exactly...people are here because they want to be healed from porn addiction or because benefits (or religion, maybe there are more reasons)...if i don't have benefits and if i am not porn addict i would never do noFap...noFap just because competition makes no sense...
     
    RecoveringFapaholic likes this.
  19. phwrancesco

    phwrancesco Fapstronaut

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    and btw, if competing is a way to stimulate each other to have long streaks it can only be a good thing!
     
  20. Exponential Power

    Exponential Power Fapstronaut

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    By this definition I was never a porn addict. I used porn about once a month for several days, but I had a daily MO habit. It still affected me negatively in ways I wasn't aware of. I tried to quit porn but I couldn't. Those familiar images, the secret bookmarks on my phone; they were my friends. It was only when I realized the pain they caused me that could let go. They made my life seem inferior because my reality did not live up to the fantasy. I still did not delete the bookmarks until recently even though I did not look because I wanted them to be there in case I missed my old friends. But porn is not my friend. Now that I know how much better my life is I refuse to let porn take it from me. When I am with my wife and I look into her eyes it's only about us. I've experienced a new deeper intimacy that I didn't know was possible after nearly 6 years of marriage. F@#k 90 days! I will be PM free FOREVER! My only sexual experiences are with my wife and they're amazing! Many people here have suffered greatly because of porn. 90 days is just the beginning. It is the average amount of time necessary to heal the damage caused by porn, but the healing process continues when they remain porn free.
     

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