Retention benefits or dangers, and lingering effects of porn this far out. My story of 339 days

Greetings NoFap community,

What a terrible thing porn is. I feel as though it had a firm grip on my well being, affected through an actual grip on my penis, for the better part of my life. Since age 11 I had been watching porn frequently, it was very much a part of the culture for boys of my age, and so I felt justified in doing it often. I have now 21 and for 339 days now I have not consumed pornography of any kind. Last summer I went through a long period of withdrawels and relapses. When work had me tired after a long day, it was easy to masturbate and quickly browse through porn and compilations before I fell asleep. Adding to my lack of self control with something I already new was bad for me, and certainly bad for any sort of dating life I hoped to have someday, was habitual marijuana use as well. Since the end of last summer, I have been able to remove all these negative things from my days and improve my well being far beyond what I thought was possible last year. I have more energy, I am far more self aware, social anxiety is rarely a concern, I feel confident to talk to any woman, I have had more sexual partners in the past year than I had had in my entire life prior to beginning NoFap.

I certainly abused pornography and NoFap helped me become conscious of that. Once I was at least conscious of the issue, the real struggle began that would take 3 months of back and forth mood swings, relapses, and unnerving sexuality questioning. Someone on this forum suggested to readers that they buy a notebook and starting writing about the feelings and urges and experiences. This was quite a foreign idea to me and I felt weak at first to imagine myself journaling. Real men, athletes, mentally strong people don't need to have a diary, so I told myself. It turns out that keeping a journal was the best thing I ever did for myself. It helped me become accountable to myself week after week. I could view how I was feeling 2 weeks ago, 3 weeks ago, the last relapse, the last time I felt invigorated with energy due to abstinence, whatever the emotion happened to be. For anyone out there still struggling with relapses, don't give up. You will beat this thing that steals your soul that our society calls pornography and tries not to talk about. Start a journal. Be accuntable to yourself and know that a better you awaits. Learn about other health practices that can help your overall mindstate. I began taking cold showers, meditating, the Wim Hof breathing method, learning handstands, reading more books, becoming more conscious of the foods I eat, quit dairy, lowering suger intake. All these things will give you your strength back and strengthen your bond with your soul. Self love is not masturbation, but rather a set of tasks you perform frequently, even when they are uncomfortable, serving as routine scheduled maintanence for this life full of potential you live through the remarkable human body which can operate and feel like a well oiled machine when you give it the proper attention.
With all this being said, it is not over for me. I still have images of porn trapped in my brain. Given my experience with dopamine levels rising and falling rapidly due to PMO withdrawals, I feel as though these images are implanted more firmly in my brain due to how much dopamine stimulation was happening at the time I viewed that material. Porn websites are dopamine grabbing machines, just like our social media apps and devices are engineered to be like. The financial world demands the attention of consumers and there are people tasked with figuring out the best way to do that. The porn industry is massive, and YOUR health is the last thing they are concerned with.
Although I feel so much progress has occured, I am still finding myself back on this forum searching for inspiration to not type those quick 5-10 letters into my URL bar to my favorite porn site and clicking enter. I have spent more than a year struggling with this problem, I am not at my full potential becasue I poisoned myself with this warped view of reality for most of my life; I refuse to allow 2s of typing in a URL bar to null that effort I've input.

Withdrawals go on for years it seems, I feel great compared to how I used to, but porn still holds a grasp on me. I have been sober from weed, nicotine, and alcohol for 6 months and nothing still holds a grasp on me like porn does.
I suppose I don't fully understand what is meant when people talk about semen retention and sexual transmutation.

Can someone who has knowledge in this please explain? I have nocturnal emissions a couple times a month which is surprising as a 21 year old. I get annoyed at this occurence because I feel like my body is betraying my efforts to retain my semen and transmute that energy into positive non-material objectives. Am I missing some sort of technique to actually retain my semen for long periods of time? Is retaining semen really bad for me, after all? Will this possibly lead to prostate issues and poor sperm quality later in life because of this sudden stop in sexual activity? When I have sex I try not to ejaculate. I have failed at this many times. I have not had sex for the past 7 months however so there has been no sexual stimulation in the period, just nocturnal emissions. For clarification, I have been porn free for 11 months, masturbation free for 11 months, intercourse/ejaculation free for 7 months. Where do I go from here?

Thank you!

 

Thank you. Nofap is largely a process of changing one's pespective on sex. Thank you for your response, it reminds me that there is a always a decision we are confronted with when these thoughts occur, to follow it or ignore it. That decision doesn't ever dissapear, it only varies in difficulty over the course of the process.

Thanks