P.A.W.S. - what are they, cure, duration

Yes it's been 7 days since my last relapse and after feeling really confident that day, I was unable to sleep and some weird symptoms have come back. I feel like I'm back in withdrawal. I have really crazy weird vivid nightmares every night I go to sleep. Yesterday I felt like total shit with some derealization and isolated myself from the outside world. Too paranoid to talk to people... Crazy shit

 

MO or PMO?

 

PMO

 

I’m 342 days hardmode and still dealing with healing Im still dealing with paws, and been in a flatline the past 2 weeks expecting another 2 weeks or so until I pop out seems to be about a month for these longer flatlines to go away, until I pop out a better person than before the flatline.

 

Yeah, I literally logged on to reply to a message from somone and in my inbox it said "delected account" where I had messaged him previously. I'm definitely curious.

Maybe he had enough, he spent years on here and didn't really get anywhere.

 

First of all, to all the cynics, nofap is real. Benefits are real. I recovered from PIED after going through nofap for 8 long months. I am going through PAWS now and from what I gather from long term rebooters, PAWS take around a year or two to go away depending upon the severity of your addiction. As a simple formula told by Gary Wilson. Multiple the number of years you were addicted by 2. The answer you get is the number of months required for complete recovery. In my case, my addiction was 12 years so I need 24 months to recover. Although I hope things get bearable after 12 months or so because my PAWS are literally killing me and am sure many other here going through know that already.

 

what are your symptoms my man

 

Social anxiety, shortness of breath while speaking which may lead sometimes to a mini anxiety attack if I am speaking to a group of people

 

Also, in my opinion, if people show complete patience with their recovery and reboot, and do reboot in its true essence without relapses, they should recover in 1-2 years. You are not doing a proper reboot if you haven't purified your thoughts, if you are still watching random hot scenes on youtube, movies, shows etc. If you are still ogling women in real life. A real proper reboot is to detach yourself from all artificial digital stimulants along with purifying your thoughts and actions. How many are actually doing reboot like this? Out of my 8 months of reboot, I practiced this for last 2 months and saw quick recovery regarding my PIED. If anyone wants to read regarding my recovery, you can read it here. The only thing you can do is have real sex and real relationship with a real girl. That is what our minds and bodies are designed for. Moreover, I have seen people here on reboot still addicted to alcohol, social media, internet. This is not true reboot. Yes, you are abstaining from porn but you can't expect a quick recovery with a reboot like this. When you do proper reboot, it still takes around 12-24 months which is NOT quick AT ALL. Just imagine the time a lousy reboot would take. Maybe Forever. I think all of us here dealing with PAWS for more than a year need to reevaluate the meaning of reboot and how they can improve it to see better results. Otherwise, I see people here not doing a proper reboot discouraging everyone else when they don't see the results. I am so thankful to have rewired my brain to get out of PIED in 8 months. I hope to get out of PAWS as well in coming 8 months and will share my journey regarding that as well with everyone. Stay strong Guys.

 

Yeah... Sure

 

What the fuck are you so sure about kiddo?

 

I got the impression he had been struggling recently. I can only hope that he decided to delete his account for positive reasons - ie he feels he can do better without Nofap, rather than wanting to quit because he's just given up trying. All the same, I hope he's OK.

 

Yeah it's a dick move. He has been here for over 2 years and owed an explanation to everyone on what the plan was.

I suspect he got sick of it all. 2 years with basically no progress while coming on here daily would make anyone snap eventually, it's no wonder he went on a mega binge.

You guys know my opinion on the whole PAWS thing so in not gonna talk about it as people seem to get triggered but from speaking to him on several occasions he had a lot of issues and instability in his life. I really hope he's gone to work on himself and comes back one day.

I'm trying not to be judgmental of him for leaving without giving and explanation but it really is selfish to some of you that have known him for a couple of years. I would go as far as to say he is probably one of the most known people on this forum.

 

One relapse is okay but binging? that's really a serious issue, maybe sobe guys never get over their addictions, who knows... perharps he'll show up in the future or maybe he may have committed suicide

 

On the original topic, there was some talk about a missing piece of the puzzle. I wonder if it's to do with the psychology of sex. Maybe porn isn't like a chemical addiction because it has that psychological aspect, reaching into deep instincts. Outside of the modern dualistic approach to science, traditional health / spiritual systems like Taoism and some branches of Buddhism regard the sexual system as very important. I don't have anything specific but I suspect there's a connection.

 

I want to a sex and porn addiction therapist 2 days ago and I had mixed feelings about it. I explained how I’ve been able to abstain for very long periods but since I went through a period of abstinence and one off relapses for years I’ve been kindling (she wasn’t farmiliar with the term) and I am now extremely sensitive to stimuli that mimics me previous use aka social media. I had been 14 months pmo free and 10 months slip free and just had my first two successful sexual encounters and out of anxiety one day reactivated Facebook and started scrolling for stimulation for a few seconds. This led to a return of paws symptoms worse than ever and they included elevated heart rate for over a week, feeling on the verge of premature ejaculation, nightmares, insomnia, panic attacks, relapsing to nicotine etc.. she at different times said this was common and that she had never seen the elevated heart rate before and was convinced it was because I’ve been taking kratom for years.. she decided to keep coming back to this as a possible cause of my paws symptoms returning after being gone for months and the fact that I’ve taken it both when I’ve been at my best and worst the past 3 years. Quite frustrating. One thing she said though is that the forums are very beneficial but that the reason many guys are on here for years without much progress is because they are bare knuckling it and don’t have a system. She also said that because of other psychological factors and underlying trauma from the addiction, many men report sexual problems long after they are physiologically ready for sex. These would include, fear of intimacy and opening yourself to the possibility of failing at sex with someone you are close to and that many of these guys don’t have that problem with one night stands.

 

I'm sorry but what you are saying is just not factual. He went on a constant back and forth of saying he's better than a few weeks later saying he's completely shit again, this was consistent. When he quit coffee he said he felt way better. You are massively over stating what he posted and said, from speaking to him a couple of weeks ago he was very much still in his own personal hell and started to doubt the whole process.

 

I deleted my other account on a whim. I should have just left it as it was but as of recent I've been relapsing ever so much and it is what is it. I'd say 20 or so times since october. It's been frustrating coming on here and updating the counter so frustration and being sick coming here everytime got the better of me.

Also I feel I'm at a point now where I'm doing much, much better symptom wise. I'm not plagued how I was by symptoms two and a bit years back (Peak of symptoms, at the worst. 30 or 40 symptoms). It was a horrible time before that where I was watching porn three times a day, drinking energy drinks, cola and coffee, unhealthy eating and limited exercise, among other many other things. All a toxic combination, a recipe for disaster.

This whole process has taught me a lot and I'll reiterate what I said a few pages ago I dont believe my case is PAWS from Porn. Infact I dont think it ever was in the first case. Extreme anxiety/depression/nervous system overload/caffeine withdrawal can plague you with the same symptoms. Infact most of these mental health condition overlap with the same symptoms.

Since sorting other stressful areas in my life, limiting alcohol, cutting out caffeine, eating healthy and stopping this insidious shit (Porn) the symptoms have deadenned down. I believe we are all extremely overloaded with stress, anxiety, depression or whatever you want to call it.

Look were all experiments in these early stages and we all have different theories why we feel like this and that but I think I have narrowed it down for myself. We all need to be open to discuss anything when it comes down to this.

I will not be using this account much at all as I'm trying my best to get away from these forums and live in the real world. Using these forums after a while becomes monotonous and I suggest limiting your time on them.

Loads of OG's on yourbrainrebalanced & on here leave after years on the forums maybe they have solved their internal puzzle.

Anyway, wish the best for you all. And experiment with different things. Quit coffee, smoking, eating shit foods, intolerances and so on and see how you feel also. I'll update in a few months as I'm going to be very busy these coming months.

And stay away from porn its poison for the mind!

 

Yes, I am going through PAWS for last 6 months. You can call me a first try guy. I can't even think of relapsing after I found out what porn is doing to my mind and body. My journey is 9 months old now. I had no idea what PAWS were. I started out to cure PIED which I have cured last month. So at least that is a BIG sign that my brain is rewiring in a positive manner. I learned about PAWS because the things that I went through in last 6 months after leaving porn, I have never been through in my life, ever. Not even close. So I eventually found out that I am going through PAWS and they take around 1-2 year to go depending on the severity of your addicition

 

Congrats on your 8 months my friend, i am very happy for you

I too believe that anything you search for that mimics the way we used porn could slow the reboot down. By how much we don't know, so the best course of action we can all take is like you said, no behavior that comes close to our porn use. The grey area i have struggled with so far is checking out women in public. I am unsure if this affects the reboot either so i do my best to work on this aspect now, as i no longer struggle from PMO urges or thoughts.

Almost 6 months for me completely free of ANY social media, except very strict Facebook use for my business and the Facebook messenger to talk to friends. So i have been extremely clean on this streak. At the beginning of this year i had 7 days where the symptoms i was facing mainly went away, like magic. Today it seems to be starting again, symptoms seem to have faded a bit. Im not 100% sure because im very sick at the moment. Im hoping that these good days will get more and more frequent, but i just let my brain do what it needs to do