These PIED recovery stories are gold to me. I seriously wonder sometimes if I will ever recover but reading about so many successful reboots / rewires is what keeps me going.
Hmm, or the reward circuit now has something else to focus on. Esp if you reach a point where you start enjoying real life sex more than PMO, I feel that could definitely speed up the rewiring process
How are your PAWS now? My PAWS got a bit better like I shared in my post but having a real rough period again for like a week or so
How ya dooin' lately? I'm same age, same time started with porn and pretty much have same sympthoms u had, difference is that I'm only on my 23th day with no PMO and cravings are killing me to that extent that my balls start hurting ), social media with almost nude girls pics are at fault, i'll soon delete the apps from my phone. Do you still get flashbacks with porn fetishes sometimes and the urge to relapse?
Thank you for sharing this amazing, inspiring post. You seem like a very honest and good person. Have a good life!
I am doing good. I posted this about 45 days ago and I have only seen improvements in these days. I have more control over my orgasm now and can prolong intercourse with slowing down a bit or stopping for a few seconds if I feel like cumming. My intercourse time was a bit less in the beginning which I ignored all together since I was just so excited because of having my first intercourse and curing my PIED. But timing of intercourse and control comes automatically over the time. The only condition obviously is that you DON'T relapse. I am still going through withdrawals or what they call PAWS. Yes, you have to delete those apps. I deleted instagram instantly because it was not allowing me to do an honest reboot. Further, it was a huge trigger because I was following a lot of models/celebs on insta. Same goes for any other porn subs. Even if you are not PMOing to those, they still prolong your reboot or if I may add, its not a true reboot at all. Urges come and go but their frequency and intensity come down with time. I used to get a lot of flashbacks in my first 6 months. They have reduced significantly in last 3 months. When I started intercourse with my wife, they came back again during orgasm. As the science says, neurons that fire together, wire together. Since, my orgasms are linked so heavily with porn over the years, they are bound to come. But thankfully, I have gotten some grip over that as well in last week or so. I now try to connect with my girl more while I orgasm instead of just closing my eyes and giving my brain time to bring those porn flashes back.
I just (re)joined this and wanted to thank you for your post. It has given me so much hope for the future, and a cleared vision of what I'm aiming for. Appreciate you!
@winningover Amazing story and well told. You must have a good relationship with your wife to communicate so well about all of that. I can feel the warmth of your relationship coming through your story.
Congratulations brother !. Your story is very educative and it has resemblance to my life. I am a 123 days fapstraunaut, I have dream to write my story one day as you did. Well done you are hero !. Thank you again and again for you and your smart wife !!
Thanks all for the generous feedback. Yes, support of your loved ones is very important and helps immensely in this journey. Some are lucky enough to get it, some not. This is a life changing journey especially for the ones who were truly addicted like myself. I am still going through it, PIED was just a symptom which I got to know after my marriage. Like I said in my original post, guys who get to know about this earlier are very lucky. It really hurts me to read about guys who are in relapses after knowing about this for a while now. I just don't want anyone else to go through what I had and have been going through. Just don't push yourself to the point where you LITERALLY have to choose between living and giving up your life through addiction. Because if you continue to fry your brain with this addiction, this point will come soon. And after that, the recovery and withdrawals are very long and very painful. Just get rid of this toxicity ASAP.
Does anyone can explain the difference between the flatline and Paws ? My understanding is they are the same, but flatline is more vague as a term and I prefer PAWS over it
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but from the posts I've read here, I think flatline is a particular symptom involving loss of libido (no sexual desire, no spontaneous arousal, and so on). It sometimes seems to occur soon after starting abstinence (mine started immediately). PAWS seems to involve a more varied collection of symptoms, both physical and psychological, not all directly to do with sex. It stands for 'post-acute withdrawal', which means it happens later in the process.
Hej nice story. I have a question. I have had different streaks from around 50 to 80 days, but it always ends with a bad day where I stop thinking about the negative results and relapse. Do you believe having a girlfriend/woman will help with the motivation to also successful handle the days where the urge is very high?
Well, I can share my own experience which is that even having an attractive girl after marriage did not stop me at first from PMO. Mind does not treat real sex as replacement of porn. In fact, real sex is totally different and opposite to porn. And that's why people develop PIED because their mind can't get any arousal from real girl. Having a woman can help in rewiring in later stages after you have successfully beaten this addiction on your own. If you're still relapsing after 50-80 days, your addiction is still with you. Moreover, 80 days or three months are not enough to recover or get rid of this addiction. People can relapse even after 500 days or 2 years because the addiction pathways remain etched in our brains for a very long time, they just get weakened with time. Also, cravings are very high in first 6 months so you need to get over that before thinking about a girlfirend/woman. Also, our brain trick us into this addiction by saying that since we don't have any woman available to have sex, it's okay to PMO. Instead of pushing and improving ourselves to the point where we are able to have a woman, we plunge ourselves deep into disaster with porn and PMO. And then the vicious cycle begins. You need to harness your energy into things so that you're able to have a woman. This requires patience, willpower and knowing the damages of PMO.