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Why people relapse after a big streak?

Discussion in 'Porn Addiction' started by Deleted Account, Oct 27, 2019.

  1. I'm always looking for stories of people who did NOFAP successfully for long periods of time, there are who succeed in quitting porn forever,but I found many other people who relapse after 5 months to 1 year of abstaining of PM, or even more.

    There's a Youtuber who said that after one year of NOFAP he no longer had the urges to watch porn, his streak now is 4 years without porn. However, there's another one who relapsed after almost 1 YEARS AND HALF OF NOFAP. Indeed, I saw many people who relapse after a big streak than people who successfully quit porn forever.

    I'm so confused why this people relapse after this amount of time without porn. What do you think about that? Why people relapse after 5 months to 1 year of NOFAP ?

    (Sorry for my English, I'm not a native speaker :D)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 27, 2019
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  2. Well, I relapsed after 169 days yesterday. For me, I can say that October was a stressful month for me, more stressful than usual. And because I have used porn and masturbation for most of my life as a way to handle stress, it does not surprise me that I fell back into my old habits. It started slowly, looking at sexy pics, and yesterday I totally relapsed.
    I do not think I had a good strategy for dealing with stress when it was at a high level. My strategy seems designed for medium level stress. But, I still have to say to myself that I have gone through most of 2019 without porn. That's a huge thing for me. And I am not feeling sorry for myself today. I am ready to begin again and remain committed to a life free or PMO.
     
  3. bigboibez

    bigboibez Fapstronaut

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    If you pick yourself up and move on you would have lost barely any progress. The problem comes when you binge it.
     
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  4. SREENII

    SREENII Fapstronaut

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    i would say all the animals in this universe have sexual urges and it cannot be stopped permanently..laziness and boredom are the prime reasons that makes us to watch porn.. the real thing you should do to avoid watching porn is keep yourself busy all the time..always engage yourself in outside activities..spend very less time at home..also installing a strong parental control software with password protection is highly recommendable..coz using parental control softwares we can prepare a whitelist of the websites that we really wanted and can block all other websites for a specific period(say 1 yr) in your pc..this can effectively control porn watching during sleeping time and other free times..
     
  5. Hros

    Hros Fapstronaut

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    As healed as one may be, somewhere inside of us there seems to be something that will always react to stress/anxiety by whispering loudly: "Pssst! PMO will solve all of your problems." Can this ever be completely solved? From what I've seen, probably not, which is sad, really. So you always need to work on being more aware of how much more susceptible you are when you're stressed, and how to deal with that stress in better ways.
     
  6. learning

    learning Fapstronaut

    I have read that most mountain climbing accidents happen on the return trip down the mountain after the goal has been achieved. Initially PMO has goals but eventually a person realizes that they are settling into a permanent new lifestyle with no more PMO ever. There will be no more feelings of accomplishment for passing various milestones. Maybe they lose their enthusiasm.

    In my case, I abstained from everything sexual for a couple of years, but then my mother was attacked physically by a burglar and decided she wanted to move-in with me. That caused me a lot of stress and depression. Also I was losing my enthusiasm for abstinence and had begun watching old movies with sexy women to brighten-up my gray and glum life of strict self discipline. Eventually I found myself watching something that aroused me too much.
     
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  7. I think we all fall back sooner or later, after I achieve my 90-day goal without pmo I will try regular masturbation. I think that can reduce the chance of falling into porn.
     
  8. XenasJourneys

    XenasJourneys Fapstronaut

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    Why do people eat fast food? Is it relapsing if you have a taste without becoming a daily heavy user nor using it to the point of losing it?
    With your mother living with you?
     
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  9. for me, it was a mix of being sick, stress, and being alone. Despite me putting barriers up, i still found a way to go through them and relapse. Now, I have to look towards the future and improve myself!
     
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  10. Relapse means to return back to where you were, it does not mean taking one step back.
    If drug addict uses daily and then begins to use every other day - he is in process of recovery, he is not relapsing every other day.
    If he stops use for a year, and then uses the drug - he is at risk of a relapse, yes, but he has not relapsed.
    If after being clean for a year he begins to use daily - he has relapsed, because he returned to same behavior he started with.

    This definition is important because people seem to call everything a "relapse" and it destroys their motivation to continue.
    Recovery is a process that takes months or years and unless you return back where you started for I would say 2 weeks, you have not relapsed.
     
  11. athlean

    athlean Fapstronaut

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    I'm almost a month into Nofap, my longest streak (voluntarily) when i started watching porn. i often get a lot of urges but i mostly think about the fact i am already a month in it and it would take me a WHOLE monh to get back on this level! OR i can choose to not do it and be 2 months into nofap accelerating my progress!

    I think the prime reason is stress and boredom, but if you keep weighing out the pros and cons when the urges come in, you will be fine
     
  12. risingStar2020

    risingStar2020 Fapstronaut

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    good question, i can answer since i’ve had 5 months and 8 month streak.

    It’s not like you will one day be magically cured forever. It’s an ongoing battle. Trials happen in life that can cause you to feel empty. To even get that far, you have to constantly be guarding your heart, and cultivating good habits.

    Let’s say for a week you drink alcohol and smoke weed and go back to old habits, then it’s easy to go back to pmo as well
     
  13. I guess you can relapse even after 10 years of NoFap. Depends what are your triggers.
     
  14. It's true. It's always a learning experience and you definitely need to keep an eye on having the right attitude. Thanks.
     
  15. Fenix Rising

    Fenix Rising Fapstronaut

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    I relapsed after being 6 months in hard mode last year and had quite a few 2-4 months streaks before that. I believe that for most of us long term addicts failures in attempts to break addiction cycle can be contributed to the unaddressed underlying issue(s) (early childhood trauma which led to lifelong depression and social anxiety in my case) that causes us to self-medicate our pain with PMO binges. If I analyze my previous streak, once I stopped PMOing unresolved psych issue started to resurface, causing more and more stress, anxiety and depression. Add some acute stressful life event on top of that and it was enough to push me back into my "safe" PMO rabbit hole again. That's why I chose to pursue different road during my current monk mode streak, trying to identify and address underlying issue as the main objective (trauma -> anxiety, depression) and getting rid of PMO addiction as a secondary goal and it worked so far. I went through mental hell to make peace with my past. I also had to learn healthy coping mechanisms to keep my depression and anxiety under control and as a result I've had no buildup of stress inside me and thus no need to relapse anymore. I truly believe PMO (or any other addiction) has been just our way of numbing the mental pain caused by unresolved psych problems inside us. Once these issue(s) are properly addressed the need for numbing our painful emotions with our drug of choice disappears.
     
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  16. skaterdrew

    skaterdrew Fapstronaut

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    Why do you think that only people who are addicted to porn or have issues with porn use porn? It's almost like saying only an alcoholic will drink alcohol, no. Many people drink alcohol who are not alcoholics. It's the same with porn.

    Alcoholics who have been clean for a long time still get urges to drink alcohol. Porn addicts who have been clean for a long time still get urges to use porn.

    But like I said people who are not alcoholics still drink alcohol from time to time, and people who are not porn addicts still use porn from time to time.

    Why do you think people who get a long nofap streak develop some sort of superhuman ability where they never get an urge to use porn ever again? You might get to a point you hardly ever get an urge to use porn, you might become much better at controlling your self. But this does not mean you will never get an urge to use porn again.

    Like I said people who have never really had any issues with porn still use porn from time to time.
     
    Last edited: Oct 27, 2019
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  17. Sometimes it starts from something small..you end up messing up on something small on a big streak..(or the small things add up as your streak grows) and then you feel like" fuck, i fucked up..im deceiving everyone..im deceiving myself and no longer deserve to feel proud of this #big number of a streak.." and it's the right feeling to have..and it can be hard to let go of a big streak on the first small thing you fuck up on..but we should..and not let it build up as the streak builds up..that makes it worse.
    On top of this, losing a streak so big can be hurtful to our feelings and views of our success..and just thinking of building it up again can bring us down(since time goes so slow when rebuilding a new streak) hard enough that usually if we reset because of something small we usually let ourselves go into the deep end and MO/PMO and endd up relapsing..and it can take a while to make a steady reliable streak again.
     
  18. patd

    patd Fapstronaut

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    Last year I have relapsed after 220days because I had kind of problem with my education and there was a lot of pressure. This year I have relapsed after 126 days because it was a stressful week with a lot of problems. Now I'm a little bit wiser and I have someone to talk about my problems. It's a secure point for me in a case of repeating behavior. Also, I have managed to create my routine if the bad time come.
     
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  19. SREENII

    SREENII Fapstronaut

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    can you please share that routine
     
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  20. Infrasapiens

    Infrasapiens Fapstronaut

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    Boredrom I suppose. I guess for some people, NoFap seems like stop doing the closest thing to a sexual experience one is ever going to get, so one may think "What is the point?".
     
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