180 days of success and cured PIED

Hello and thanks for stopping by.
Here's my success story of how I got to day 180.
(Protip: If you want to skip my rambling, there's my action point list in the end)

The beginning:
I started NoFap because of my porn addiction and sever PIED. I won't go to details here, but lets say my path was a classic story of escalation from normal vanilla porn to femdom and sissification porn, which has caused me inability to get an erection or any satisfaction from normal sex with another person.

I started my NoFap journey an the end of 2017, did one almost 90 day streak, relapsed for a couple of months and started this current streak mid April 2018.

So how I got here:
And why I was unable to get here before?
For me the main reason for constant relapses was my mindset and my approach to my relationships and women in general. But we get there later.
My first decision was to gamifying my NoFap journey. I realized that to me an idea of doing 90 days straight up was way too ambitious and overwhelming. I decided to join this 7-day challenge and once I completed that, I moved to 14-, 21-, and 30-day challenges. This way I got little victories every now and then and most importantly, I got support and motivation from other fellow Fapstronauts in the same challenges.

During this time I realized that my approach towards relationships and women was completely fucked up. I saw women only the ways of getting sex and to be frankly, only as a hole to fuck. But as I read lots of posts in the Woman-Only section, I suddenly started to see them as a person, with flaws and same sort of struggle I was having, and that sympathy towards them opened my eyes. I started to connect with women in a whole new level. I started to treat them as a person instead of just another-kind-of-sex-toy. I know, this might sound crude, but that was my perception at that time.
And this was the real beginning of my success story.

When I realized how warped my thoughts about what sex or realtionship is supposed to be, doing NoFap started to make more sense to me. I wasn't anymore doing this just for me, but also for my future. I knew I had to grow as a human being if I ever wanted to really get cured. And I did. With a help of this forum I was starting to see sex-relationship related things straight for the first time in my life. I was no longer seeing women inferior beings that was something out of my reach and which I was only allowed to drool in screen. I was seeing women just as a same kind of person as I was. Flawed, insecure persons who was seeking same kind of acceptance and love than I was. I almost cry now when I write this down. I really see women in a way I haven't been able to see them never before.

To me the greatest victory is that I've been able to pin point my true enemy in life. To me doing NoFap became very easy as I realized that my problem was my endless search of that easiest possible dopamine high. My search for this easiest possible dopamine high was the cause for my porn addiction. Once I found my real enemy, I started to change in a ways I could never have imagine.

My actions so far:
So what I did when urges or Flatline panic hit me?
This sounds almost stupid but to me the answer was physical exercise and diet. I started to change my diet, lose weight and exercise 6 days of the week. I set my goal to
a) lose weight and become more attractive in my own eyes
b) start running (I've always wanted to be a runner), and
c) schedule half an hour daily for meditation.

Diet was simple thing as there's almost infinite amount of information about different diets in interweb. I started 16/8 fasting and changed my diet to clean non-processed food (raw vegetables, fruits, berries, nuts, chicken and fish). And as I started to lose weight my confidence started to rise through the roof like a space rocket.

Exercise was a harder challenge. I've been a couch potato my whole life, and exercise was something I really hated. But I got to it anyway. I started to go for a walk six times a week and every time I felt urges rising. When ever I felt urges coming, I go for a walk. Even in the middle of the night if necessary. I was willing to be tired on the next day in work if it meant that I was able to avoid relapse. After few months of walking I started to run as my fitness level was rising.

But meditation was the hardest part. I tried traditional meditation but it wasn't working for me. Maybe I was doing it wrong (and I probably was) but I decided to change it to writing. I started to ask "How are you doing? from myself and wrote down what ever was going through my mind at that particular moment. This soul searching gave me more answers from myself than any psychologist or counselor has ever given me. I started to find my weaknesses which in turn was causing my low self-esteem, and for the first time in my life I was able to help myself to get healed. It was an exhilarating feeling and I was getting so motivated that I felt like I was alive first time in my life.

So where I am now:
Today my porn addiction is almost non-existent and I no longer have an PIED. I managed to get my first orgasm with my girlfriend somewhere around day 100 (via handjob) and finally got an orgasm from PIV sex couple of weeks ago. I still have difficulties to reach orgasm and to be honest, I still don't necessarily get one every time we have sex, but this problem will get better and this is the reason I will continue doing NoFap in the future. I don't want to fall in that porn trap again.

I've got rid off porn addiction and cured my PIED. So all in all...
I see this as a great success and victory.

My action point list:
To sum up some things that has helped me to get here:
- Find the cause of your addiction and your reason to get that dopamine high. It may be self-esteem issues, loneliness or even depression, but whatever it is, you gotta find it.
- Start new hobbies that distracts you from abstaining porn. If you only sit in your house and concentrate only on abstaining from porn, you most likely relapse sooner or later. Concentrate on something else. Go outside. Go for a walk. Go read a book on a coffee shop. Don't stay in your house. Physical exercise will get you outside and drains your excessive energy.
- Minimize your screen time. Every minute watching screen is a potentially triggering event.
- Minimize your time on social media. This does two things: First you'll see lot less triggering images (bikini-beach-vacation-type-things) and second you'll stop comparing yourself to others. It'll make huge difference.
- Read posts from this Forum. Take tips from others. Take what you can and do what ever you have to.
- Help other fellow Fapstronauts in this Forum. The more you help, the more you get in return. Motivating someone else gives you motivation to continue your own journey.

Here's my story. I hope my story inspires and give hope to someone.


- Mike Bonanno

 

Great post

 

Thanks mate!
I try not to take anything granted. The price of my addiction is constant vigilance from now on.

 

This is very good question and I believe there's no one right answer to this. It really depends on a person. I am fortunate to have a very patient girlfriend (I met her around the same time I started this current streak). I went to flatline after first week and after that I was having severe erectile problems and I couldn't get decent erections for something like first two and a half months. At times I couldn't get any kind of erection at all, which was quite weird and frightening feeling.
After two and a half months I finally started to get random morning woods and started to see small improvements in my erections and that gave me some much needed hope. From there my improvements were quite linear and my hope rise as my erections grew stronger.

So... Unfortunately I have no answer to you my friend as I was in a relationship while doing my reboot. But remember that if you fail to get an erection, it's not the end of the world. Girls are incredibly understanding especially if you tell them what you're going through, and if a girl make fun of that kind of situation, she's a total asshole. And add to that, every man have erectile problems from time to time. We're not a robots and we will have our bad days also. If your stressed out, tired and worrying too much every day things, you're most likely to have some sort of erectile problems even if there's nothing wrong with you.

You can satisfy your partner many other ways than just penetration. Main point of sex is enjoy the moment and intimacy, not concentrate on your performance.

 

Great job , congrats on the 180+days you earned it

 

Thank you all for congratulations and your support.