Almost 3 years , shocking results about everything

I will not talk here about the benefits of recovery only, but I will also try to tackle the fundamental issues of self-perception and the distorted sense of reality which I suffered before and after I came across this challenge, I can tell that some of my views here may offend some brothers and sisters which take the spiritual realm to be a matter of jest and superstition, I will try however to translate my insights to their language too. Therefore, before I start I want to notify that this is PURELY SUBJECTIVE, I have no scientific or objective proof for what I'm about to say. However, I believe that is it universally true for every human, but as I said, I have no proof for it.
The first time I read about nofap I was an atheist who did not believe in any moral order, however the life of anxiety and depression I had made me try this challenge as a desperate move towards getting out of my situation, I was 20 years old back then, now I'm 23.
I will denote the practices of PMO (every sexually immoral practice, that is, every sexual practice outside marriage) as sexual lust

The outward symptoms of sexual lust
this is the part which is the most interesting to all of us, this is what I experienced when I lived in fornication (whether the sin of self-abuse called "masturbation" or regular fornication called "sexual relationships")

1) voice : if someone has a fornication habit they may start to notice that their voice gets weak, it does not go out smoothly to outside, like something is stopping it from going out, then they may notice that they feel their voice to sound like a girl on the inside, although on the outside it sounds as a normal guy. The final stage of this symptom that their voice becomes like a regular woman on the outside, and this means that they are sunken deep in fornication. The intensity of this symptom varies on how often they do that sin.
The most important thing is that after they stop doing the immoral practices they regain their normal masculine voice, and they feel very comfortable when they talk, just like they used to be when they were children. But this will happen gradually during the period of recovery.
For the ladies, I am not sure, but I think they experience the same symptoms vice versa, if they live in fornication they also feel a certain masculinity in their voice.

2) posture : if you notice that your lower back is inclined and makes your posture look like a triangle, it's not necessarily something particular in your body as you may think, in my case it was because of fornication, after you stop it you regain your erect posture and your lower back doesn't stand out as it used to do.

3) physical perception : fornication makes your natural perception shorter and your sense of space smaller, for example, if someone is 5 meters far away from you, and you intend only to salute him, not to start conversation with him. instead of saluting him from that distance, you will walk close to him and then salute him. this how you your physical realm becomes smaller due to fornication.

4) involuntary speed, involuntary violence : this a final-stage symptom, it means that you began to lose a lot of your self-consciousness, it manifests in this wise: you can't walk slowly even if you want to, like something is pushing you to be fast, you can't make a slow gesture with your hands.

5) alert : a dangerous symptom after recovery: you get a sudden interest from a person and temptation for fornication:
This happens after recovery, and it's something that I experienced personally and made me fall to a worse situation than I was before starting the challenge. If you're a guy who decided to stop the fornication lifestyle and went through the journey, you may start to notice more attention from girls (who are themselves victims of that lifestyle but don't know it yet) and sometimes offers for that mortal sin. Also for girls, if they repent and decide to get clean they will notice more attention and temptation from guys (who are themselves victims of that lifestyle but don't know it yet)


The inward symptoms of sexual lust

Here I have to introduce a spiritual concept to explain what happens on the inside :
The devil, something that affects us, although it has no existence in the physical world and no power over us, only through our will. As I promised my atheist friends to translate my concepts to their language, this is the synonym of the devil : the Ego. If I try to make an analogy between psychology and spirituality I will say : the spiritual realm = unconsciousness, the devil = the ego. (if you want further reading about this check out the ideas of Carl Jung)
The act of sexual lust is an act of ego because it's a rebellion against the moral order of society (marriage) and a self-assertion in the negative sense of the word, everyone knows deep inside that it's a wrong thing to do. Therefore, acting upon it leaves one anxious and feeling very unsafe.

1) anxiety : this manifests in many ideas attacking you when you are alone, most of them are irrational, you are sensible to sounds and any sudden change makes you afraid, when you are with people you interpret their words always in a negative light, you may think that you are indirectly concerned if someone says anything, the final stage of this is believing that you are innocent and everyone else is malicious person.
Then everything becomes like a lie, this distorted sense of reality causes further and further anxiety.

2) self image: you feel that you're unworthy, and you begin to judge yourself upon irrational criterion like physical image, educational success, professional success, of course what you don't know yet is that even if you win a Nobel Prize you will still feel unworthy if you don't quit fornication. Upon this phenomenon, you begin to prove to yourself the opposite by putting a big effort in appearance: social media, working out, etc ...

3) short-temper, low-patience : in this stage performing daily tasks becomes unsupportable, you can neither work nor study, you're busy all the time in thinking about yourself, you can't humble yourself to any necessity, and you react to everything , especially things which don't concern you(other people, politics, sports, etc) . Sometimes you play the role of the observer, or the thinker, all this is a trap from the ego to alienate you from your reality and your self-consciousness.

3) the final stages : it can develop to mental problems, and suicidal thoughts, this happens especially in the case of sexual perversion (which I experienced and got out of it by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ), the devil will keep reminding you of what you did and then offer suicidal thoughts, the only solution here is to humble yourself and keep your faith. (consult orthodox Christian guidelines for more details)

The most dangerous symptom : your heart becomes hard like stone, this is I believe is the hardest part about it, you lose the capability for love (or you develop a sick kind of attachment and believe it to be love). And you start living in the hell described by Fyodor Dostoevsky :
“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”


Conclusion : your life will drastically improve after repenting from fornication, I am not offering a negative conception of sexuality as it may sound but a negative conception of sexual immorality, even if you don't believe what I say, please consider giving it a chance and see for yourself if the results are real, of course it may need several months depending on how much you're addicted(in my case 8) in order for the results to take effect. (when the effects of the past lifestyle exit the unconsciousness, this will make you remember what you did before with ease, like someone else did them and not you, but this needs humility and faith alongside)

If you tried everything and nothing worked, consider this as a last desperate move.
Sorry for the long text and the inaccurate English, God bless you my beloved brother/sister.

 

God bless you brother

 

"Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body."
1 Corinthians 6:17-19

hello brother, I'm on the onset of my journey of repentance since it is a lifetime mission, the symptoms I mentioned are related to that particular sin, and this sin can be the source of other sins, for example: compulsive lying, based on my experience repenting from this sin is the first step towards inner purification. But be sure that I struggled with other passions too, and they were also challenging, like greed, vainglory and vengeance. Bless you

 

Good luck to all of us

 

No bro, English is not my native language, I already figured that I wrote this poorly, I apologize for this inconvenience, please point to any sentence that you didn't understand, and I will try to reformulate it.

 

Yes bro, I have experienced all of them

 

Indeed bro, the only healthy outlet for human sexuality is marriage, anything else is poison to the soul and the body

 

good luck to all of us my beloved brother

 

Very interesting question bro, I hope my response will be relevant to you.
Firstly I need to clarify that I haven't had a 3 years streak, I had successful streaks during 3 years since I discovered the challenge, but my current successful one is 8 months long. When I first read about nofap, my motivation was to get out of my miserable lifestyle, get productive and have a "girlfriend" (now after 3 years I discovered that my deeper problem was a distorted sense of reality, it is the psychological perversion of needing a "girlfriend "). After 6 months of my first streak, a girl older than me in college came across me and showed interest, then I committed fornication with her. The girl herself had psychological problems which made her offer me that from the first place, but my ego blinded me and made me see it in terms of looking like an interesting guy and being cool. Of course after I did that thing I discovered that things got way worse than before and I got stuck in a toxic and forbidden relationship, the girl I was trying to prove myself to by doing that thing lost all respect for me just after I did it (before I did it she showed exceeding respect), many complications happened while I was trying to end the relationship. Losing my purity with her was a very regrettable decision.

Now concerning your question, I don't perceive the benefits or the drawbacks in terms of energy as some Buddhist or Hindu brothers may do, my conception of them (based on my religion) is in terms of the Holy Spirit and the unclean spirits. Thus, if you don't do the sin of "self-abuse" and then go visit a prostitute, you will suffer much more damage because it's a more perilous sin.
If you want to see it as plain energy, you can say that when we do a good deed, we offer help for someone, we keep our patience in hardships, we act kindly and honestly, those deeds reward us by positive energy. When we do evil deeds, a negative energy dwells in us (which causes the symptoms I discussed).

To sum up, from my personal experience fornication has caused me a lot of wasted time and drove me to more dangerous traps (from just wanting to have a girlfriend to imitate a fictional lifestyle sold to us in movies, I fell to sexual perversion and effeminacy), but it made me understand that my deeper problem was my childish and delusional perception of reality.

 

thank you for the response, regarding what you said about those girls it may be true, but I think we need only to avoid fornication and the temptation that comes from them, however, seeing them as purely evil doesn't help from my experience, because we can happen to do the same things they did and create problems for others, everyone has a story, and maybe they were victims in past circumstances, the best approach in my opinion is to regard them as people who couldn't do better, I am saying this because I tried the path of revenge and violent reactions, and it brought me more bondage than freedom, but everyone is free how to see things.

Regarding why "sexual relationships" outside marriage are forbidden, I cannot provide any scientific explanation but if you think in a purely human way you'll understand it, the natural order of things for humans and the dynamics of male/female are thus: love from the male and obedience from the female. This is the right order of things that allows children to grow up in a healthy way, why does the male have to love his wife, because she is his own body, the act of human sexuality is a unification of two bodies under a spiritual and eternal contract, therefore the marriage requires both the man and woman to have kept their purity, men who have a past find it hard to restore the natural and spontaneous ability of loving their wives, and women with a past find it hard to restore the natural and spontaneous ability of obeying their husbands. This is my understanding of what has been told in the bible, but I'm not sure about it.


Now considering the symptoms those the ones I noticed in me
1) 1-red face/ inflammated : yes I had it
2) lower back curve : it got straight gradually after I stopped
5) about emotions : when I lived in fornication I was hyper-emotional (bad emotions : anger, curiosity, attachment, etc)
and after I stopped they decreased gradually, and I became more "doing" than "feeling"
6) my communication got way better after I stopped, I can express my ideas in a clear and spontaneous way , but this happens slowly
7) after I stopped, my rational thinking and ability to organize my ideas got better, but my thought process became very slow (although effective) and it takes much more time than before to do any intellectual activity, this can be seen as a symptom of "rewiring", I think however that eventually the slowness fades away (I'm not sure)
9) spirit-less face : this happened to me after I stopped, a friend noticed that my face has only one expression, I don't know if it can be called spiritless, but it's more of a "fixed face"