Withdrawal Symptoms for 1 Year

After spending nearly 90 minutes of reading this here I would say this.

By not watching porn and not masturbating you always do progress! For some people, it can take much longer to see good results and for some, it is shorter, even 45 days will do the job. Many times person can have some other problem they don't have anything to do with nofap or pornography. I have been sort of addicted to porn for 22-23 years and fapping for 18-19 years. So I can easily imagine that I will be healing for loooong time over the years, but hopefully, by my 40s, I will be reasonably alright.

Regarding to depression, I don't think that psychiatrist and medicine will help. I strongly believe and sorry to say that, that antidepressants are the same sort of shit as fapping. Depression in us comes because there is some unresolved issue we need to find out and sort it out. By taking antidepressants it is the same as fapping, sort of. You don't want to fap and you don't want to take antidepressants as both is fucking up your brain and both of them make you believe that they helping you to live "happy" life and cover unresolved issue which is deeper in you. Huge self-development is needed here. Also, study Wim Hoff breathing and exposure to icy showers. There are some people they have cured depression with this and they had depression for 20 years. That breathing he does really give a loooads of oxygen into brain and brain can slowly regenerate a bit.

But of course, I am not saying that that will help you, not. Everybody works differently. You need to find out where is your problem, listen to your soul, what are your deepest dreams. Follow your dreams. You can also have a depression because you beating yourself up to death. That's not healthy as well. Also, there are allergens which are helping to keep depression running especially for sensitive people, caffeine, sugar, gluten, milk, could be anything. There is much to talk about.

Of course, there are some sort of extreme cases of depressions where a chemical imbalance in the head can't be treated differently than strong medicine even though that medicine will not cure it, only push it to the bearable stage.

 

Do you think people leave this forum after success because theirs lives are so awesome?

 

Maybe they become life coaches so have no more time for this forum ))

 

I’ve seen this kind of response often and it simply does not fit with what I nor many other fapstronauts experience. Yes, clinical depression may have been present all along in some PMO addicts, and they were covering it up by constantly jerking off. However in many cases these negative side effects are either directly caused from PMO or they are a direct result of abstaining from PMO, which in turn creates withdrawal symptoms. Telling everyone on these forums that is experiencing negative symptoms that they simply need to visit a psychiatrist is often not the answer. In fact from what I’ve seen, more often than not PMO is the very thing that creates mental health problems in addicts, and not because they have “underlying issues” present already. When they abstain the mind and body lashes out due it not getting its fix of hormones that it’s been used to being flooded with, and thus the withdrawals that follow exasperate the negative effects that PMO has already caused until sufficient time passes for the individual to recover. I for one am not in favor of introducing prescription medication into the mix for someone who is already trying to reboot their neural pathways. The mind and body will recover eventually on their own but depending on the length and intensity of each person’s addiction, that can take up to several years to happen...

 

Couldn’t agree with you more. A lot will say it’s also psychosomatic but no man once these symptoms hit after abstaining it’s almost impossible to believe the brain and body can put you through something like this. For severe addicts the withdrawals mimick alcohol and benzo withdrawals also if the symptoms are severe then you can bet also on paws. Before I quit I was spending about 4 hours a day on porn with 3 hour edging sessions. People don’t understand the toll this takes on the brain,body,nervous system.

 

@saneagain

In severe cases of people being addicted to drugs like cocain or meds like Benzos and antidepressants paws can last anywhere from 6 months to 4 or more years. I’ve been on alcoholic recovery forums and benzo too and a lot of them still after 3+ years still experience some symptoms. I’ve read your threads and what I can say is to not even masturbate or even touch your dick for some time. You have no idea what happens in your brain when you masturbate and are in withdrawal. It’s like an alcoholic saying one beer wouldn’t hurt at least he’s not blacking out. It’s the chemical reaction and the re-activation of those addictive pathways. All of them report after kindling with it the symptoms return even worse. Another thing I would suggest not doing a lot of is working out. You said it makes symptoms worse and that is because your body is both physically and mentally worn out and you need complete abstinence not even masturbation for your body to recover. For other people doing instead exercise is beneficial but in our cases the body is in complete freefall and will need some time to adjust just please don’t lose hope.

 

I’m literally experiencing everything you describe and I can say for a fact that it’s very real and not “psychosomatic” like some claim. I’ve noticed a pattern too. During my first three weeks of abstinence on a new streak I feel pretty good. Then after week 3 the withdrawals hit me like a freight train. I’ve been so dizzy and exhausted the last few days I’ve had difficulty even standing for extended periods of time and have had to abandon my usual hour long walk in the evenings. I also seem much more sensitive to heat and higher temperatures, so much so in fact that a couple nights ago whilst taking a shower I nearly fainted from heat exhaustion. Began feeling nauseous and weak and then suddenly my hands and feet became tingly and numb and I had to turn the water to cold and sit down until I got over the dizziness and regained the feeling back in my extremities. Nothing in my life has changed other than beginning a new streak over a month ago. I've been maintaining a healthy diet and exercising daily until the dizziness made it impossible for me to. I've been to see several different doctors all within the last six months who gave me a clean bill of health aside from slightly elevated blood pressure which I've noticed seems to coincide with my withdrawal-induced anxiety (I monitored it daily and it was completely at normal levels when I felt more chilled out at the beginning of my streak). I also always take a warm shower and blast cold water at the end, and that was no different in this case.

The only explanation for it is withdrawal.

 

I think all these “experts” and neuroscientists should really study the effects of porn. For them it’d be groundbreaking research but it’s not shit we don’t already know. I really do think more emphasis should be placed on the effects of porn and the withdrawal aspect of it. Sure the pied connection was made years ago and for older men (no high speed internet porn) 6-8 weeks took care of it. With younger guys like me I’ve seen some pretty nasty stories of withdrawals to where if you showed it to anyone they’d think it was drug addiction and that’s the scary part it really does resemble it.

 

Saneagain any update on how you feeling?

I am in the same situation man, first symptoms I experienced were after 70 streak after 4 years of pmo such as ringing ears, nerves sound from the back neck. Since then I had a lot shorts streaks especially from 50-60 days range I started having all of these symptoms mentioned.If I knew I'd experienced those things I would never be a pmo addict in the first place.

 

I feel exactly the same at almost 5 moths. Depression and suicidal thoughts came up again, and this time even stronger and longer...In the morning i get up from bed anything between 10.30 and 12.00, and that's terrible...

 

Yes its 100% withdrawal. I too suffer from long withdrawal periods. I posted this in another thread, but will post again.

 

Interesting that you too have the head pressure, normally only associated with very high levels of stress or drug withdrawals and yet so many people abstaining from PMO have experienced tension/pressure in their head and jaw

 

Yeah man before recently I even grabbed my neck when talking to people. The stress is ridiculous. It all boils down to some sort of HPA-axis dysfunction that involves the vagus nerve. It's as if no matter what you do you just can't relax, and nerves take over in every situation. Like having an important exam 24/7.

 

I read "Low iq syndrome"

Is that a thing? Because i just realized i'm really feeling less intelligent, almost stupid, i can't read a book (in the last years i was reading at least 3 a month), i make stupid mistake in my work.
It really feel i'm becoming stupid, and it's quite terrible, my work need to be quite smart and fast, and i'm loosing it...

 

That is exactly how it feels. I seem to be picking up on stress a tiny bit better now and can hold my own over the past month or so I have noticed. Also my head tension isn't as significant as it has been over the last year or so. I do have a much clearer head it seems for the time being. It's still present to somewhat degree but only a minor tension. Only cleared up literally in the last month or so too and it correlated with a period of bad insomnia too. I think hopefully i'm entering a point of real recovery now.

 

I think this is called psychomotor retardation I posted this on an old thread somewhere here months and months ago, no one came back and replied. I had it terribly to the point I'd even zone out of conversations with people, like their words would go straight through me.

 

It’s most likely tied to neurotransmitter deficiencies and imbalances especially dopamine

 

I think i have something like that, i'm really becoming stupid, the problem is my work is quite dangerous if you're stupid.
How long did you have this?

 

I think I had it for 3 years. My problem solving skills were non-existant I was an apprentice plumber at the time, fuck knows how I passed now looking back but everything was just hard-work like learning wise anyway, felt stupid as fuck.