No masturbation, but yes watch porn

Exactly!
I couldn't agree more!!!

 

It's like a smoker walking around with an unlit cigarette in their mouth.

I don't see any good coming from this but it is up to you.

 

in my experience there is no point in watching porn without masturbating

 

I’ve experimented on that and it ended up in disaster. It only makes your brain harder to not engage. I’d advise to lay off it, completely.

 

Perhaps only experience will drive the point through, even though it seems fairly obvious. Why else would you consider this except that you don't want to stop watching porn because you are addicted to it?

 

but what if you cant resist it

 

I masturbated before any exposure to porn.

 

I can masturbate without porn very easily.

 

All I’m saying is I don’t believe they have to go together.

 

By all means, try it. I'm actually pretty interested to see how you feel after a week or a month. I don't think you will be feeling to good though. Good luck.

 

Yeah there really isn't lmao they go hand and hand no pun intended

 

My situation might be unique. I have ED but it’s main cause is the use of anti depressants. I have have major clinical depression for over 20 years. I was never a huge porn consumer. Going months without watching porn was common for me before NoFap. Watching porn exascerbates my ED but my use was minimal. The same is true for masturbation. I would maturbate st most 2X a week. I tried NoFap merely as an experiment as the little pills didn’t really help me at all. I’ve been PMO free most of the last 3 months and and the results have been very good.

 

Good to hear your progress.

But getting off the anti-depressants must be the ultimate goal. And that is no easy process, if I understand it correctly. Cold turkey on steroids...

I'm of the opinion that anti-depressants (SSRI?) are worse than almost any other drug, legal or otherwise. And modern psychiatry with their Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders witchcraft is a veritable plague on society. I'm sorry you've been caught up in their sorcery and wish you Godspeed with your recovery.

 

I had a friend who used to do that when trying to quit smoking. It would have been a disaster for me when I was quitting, but in the end it worked for him and it took me a lot longer and more attempts to do it than he needed.

Humans are fascinating critters

 

The problem is that for someone who is addicted to PMO, the process is watching P which leads to M and then O. It's really hard for most addicts to take the first step of their process and then avoid the next one(s).

It's kinda like an alcoholic who is trying to quit drinking going to a bar. They would be OK if they didn't have that first drink, but it's really hard to avoid the first one in that situation for them. And once they take the first drink the next 6 are even harder to avoid.

Then again, there are some outliers out there who break from the accepted best practices and do well. See my last post above this one for one example. That is rare though. The vast majority of the time it's best to go with best practices that have proven to work for most people.

 

Guys, there's a cache here. If you say that watching porn and not MO causes some unhealthy dopamine, what different occurs when I see a hot girl in real life? It will also secrete the same chemicals, won't it?

 

IMO it's nowhere near as severe. It is also a real girl instead of pixels and she will likely have her clothes on and not be engaging in anything as stimulating as what we see in porn videos. Much less dopamine

I go to the gym regularly so I sometimes see young women in good shape in tight clothes working out. That is a lot easier for me to deal with than watching porn.

 

First of all when I do watch porn I feel bad because I feel it’s exploitive in nature. Jacking off to it makes it doubly so. I use it because it makes me release faster with greater intensity so I get instant relief from cleaning out of the pipes per se.

If I jack off to the image of real girl I have dated etc I feel a deeper connection. It takes longer but it’s more fulfilling. It’s a different experience.

 

A hot girl in the gym is nowhere near porn. Everything about it is different.

 

Most of us won't feel that though, if we M to any picture whether it be from P or like you say from a date, it's the same experience.

The gym is a good example, because the difference is one has a natural dopamine effect while the other is simulated and usually has a high dopamine spike. It's hard for people to understand if they're not addicted or M/P didn't bother them that much in the first place.