Is masturbation allowed at all?

Porn is the main problem.
You can masturbate but it will slow you down and could lead to full relapse.
Ideally you should quit porn and masturbation for at least 30 days to see results. 90 days is considered to be a standard.

Depending on your porn usage it could take much longer or much shorter time. If you watched mostly vanilla porn (no extreme fetishes or compilations) then you could see your ED gone in less than 2 weeks.

 

its best to not watch porn and no fapping. If you can stop both in time your ED will go away and you'll function like you should normally. Don't give in, just makes the ED clock start over. You have a real goal

 

Do not watch porn. This is one of reasons why http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7df_1323733520
Do not masturbate, we are all here to quit that and support each other.
Seeing benefits of nofap depends on person but i think that is has to be at least 20-30 days to see real results.

Do not surrender!

 

My experience is that after 2 weeks the desire to gratify the need staves off. Stick with it man, it will subside, and after that, such things may even repulse you. I've rarely watched porn and don't intend to again...you just don't know the history of these women..abuse, sex trade etc, I don't wish to be a part of that. All the best with it, your power awaits!

 

Between porn and masturbation, porn is the bigger evil here. However I strongly advise to keep yourself away from both of them at least for the full recovery time, 90 days. We all want to quit porn forever, so that's out of the question, but masturbating sometimes (twice a month for example) is not dangerous. It might be morally questionable and you have to deal with energy loss after it, but that's it. Of course if it causes you to relapse to porn, than stay away from it. You can live just fine without MO.

What are we allowed to look at? I don't consider porn anything that doesn't show the primary genitals. This stands for both movies and pictures. One thing that we all have to understand. Even if we see something erotic or arousal it still doesn't mean that we have to jerk off immediately. Better to be able to deal with urges than trying to hide from them.

How much time does it take for the results to show up? Depends on what you want and how deep you are into PMO. Even than it can vary. Everybody is different.
Personally I live my life just the same as with PMO. I didn't notice any major changes so far. I'm at 46 days now. There is just one thing, that deep down I know that I no longer watch porn, and that gives me a warm and satisfactory feeling. The people I told about my nofap challenge look up on me and admire me because of this (all of them are girls) and I don't want to lose this.

If I want to mention minor changes... well I'm more easily aroused, I find more girls attractive then before. No wonder, I have more testosterone in my body than ever before.
Any other changes that might be are subtle, and I don't recognise them. Maybe if I'd go back to PMO, I would feel them disappearing, but I'm not going to do that.

Stay strong and stay clean.

 

Hi Admiral, welcome. We love porn. There is a reason for that. Porn is a button we push to get instant gratification. It is a button we push to release dopamine, the greatest drug in the history of the world. It is naturally produced in our brain and is released in response to sexual stimulation--not actual physical stimulation--but thinking of sex. Unfortunately, that part of our brain's reward center cannot distinguish between high speed internet porn and sex; it rewards both with a dopamine release, which is where the addiction begins.

Your question about "vanilla porn" tells me you have not come to understand what porn is. Porn is sexual images that releases dopamine. Does not matter whether it is vanilla or hardcore; our brains do not distinguish. Porn is seeing it, watching it, experiencing it, PMOing, MOing while thinking about it (even if not watching it simultaneously), edging, etc. It is even thinking about porn during actual sex. I confess that early on in my journey I thought watching vanilla porn, as opposed to some very hardcore stuff, was making progress. It was not. What I had to learn was that vanilla porn, as well as a lot of sexual imagery that many would not even consider pornographic, was a trigger that released dopamine for me. Even bikini pics are triggers for me. Once I understood I had a lot of buttons I could push to release dopamine, I had to learn to quit pushing them.

In reading your post, you sound like a guy who wants to control his problem. But, porn is a problem that cannot be controlled. It is not possible to keep porn in your life, in your head, in your brain, and beat the problem. For those of us here who have totally, completely, quit it, we had to completely eliminate it from our experience to do so. We could not keep it around, even just a little bit. We could not go from hardcore to vanilla porn and beat it, we had to eliminate porn in all forms in our lives. Vanilla porn is just another button we push to release dopamine, so if the question you ask is whether using that button is acceptable, the answer is no if you are trying to quit.

There are basically two types of guys here; those who want to keep porn in their lives, but want to control it, and the others, who came to realize they could not control porn, so had to totally eliminate it from their experience. You need to figure out which side of that line you are on. I think you are struggling with giving it up, whether you can give it up. That is a hard thing to do for a porn addict. Are you an addict? I don't know. I know I am, and realizing that was necessary for me to address the problem. I had to learn that porn was not a toy I could simply pick up and put down whenever I felt like playing with it. For a lot of us the thought of having no porn at all, whatsoever, in our lives, is terrifying. It is a crutch we have come to rely on. But if you truly want to beat porn addiction, porn has to go. Masturbation is just a symptom of the problem for most of us. Once you get rid of porn you will find that controlling masturbation comes much more easily.

And what are you giving up when you give up porn? Answer: nothing. It is valueless. Sure it is a quick high, but nothing more. Your life is not better with porn in it, it is not less valuable with porn out of it.

Get educated. Know the biology and science behind high speed internet porn, and it will help you understand what you are dealing with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ya67aLaaCc&feature=youtu.be

Good luck on your journey.

 

Welcome, im gonna keep it short:

you came to a site called NoFap and then asked if masturbation is allowed.

its not, you can masturbate if you want, but you wont be in the challenge

 

Hi, if it's only porn you are wishing to cut out, there's a whole different challenge out there for you, called PornFree. You can find their headquarters over here http://www.reddit.com/r/pornfree/ This challenge, NoFap focuses mainly on the No Masturbating part, hence the name, but also includes PMO / Porn abstinence within the challenge. I hope that's clear enough.

 

Admiral, you are making a false distinction. It's OK, it's a false distinction most of us make on the way to clean. Your brain makes no distinction between vanilla porn and hardcore. The button is pushed either way. I, myself, made the same false distinction early on. I went from extreme hardcore to Victoria Secrets models. Said to myself, this is progress. It is not. It was still pushing the button. One of the problems with high speed internet porn is that, not only is IT addictive, but once I became addicted to IT, I began to trigger on everything. Bikini pics are not addictive, but they trigger me now. They did not before high speed internet porn, but now they do. You ask about fapping if not watching porn, but probably you are thinking of porn, while fapping. That is still porn use.

There are two types of guys here. Those who want to keep porn in their lives, but control it, and the others, who know they cannot control porn, so put it out of their lives completely. It is hard to step into the second category because we love porn. Translation, we love the dopamine high it gives us. But there is no middle ground.

Good news: porn has no value so giving it up costs you nothing.

Peace.

PS. Sorry if some of the replies here are abrupt or even harsh. Those of us who have quit porn are not playing. We are quit. It is not easy, so don't expect easy answers.

Good luck on your journey.

 

William hit the nail on the head again...

Think of it this way, and let's take it to the extreme to really see the point: if you eliminate P, but still fap 5-6 times a day, every day, do you think that's progress? I dont! Your brain is still going after that dopamine high. Until you eliminate your "need" for that high, you're not making true progress.

Softcore, hardcore, vanilla - it's all porn. It's all giving you the same dopamine rush. Same goes for edging and MO. It's about rewiring your brain.

Best of luck! We're all figuring this thing out as we go!

 

Cutting back on P seems to be key in rationalizing the murge to MO too. While I totally understand that from the beginning, rationalizing your bad habits can be a hindrance and a downright obstacle to maintain your goals, cutting back from adult entertainment has made me in a good way to rationalize my want/need/urge to MO no matter the source of instigation.

To me, it's more about why would you want to MO in the first place than about what's the correct method to define/categorize these habits. When I see a trigger, why should I not exercise willpower and use my energy/time for something more productive? It's not like we go and binge-eat steaks when we see a picture of a fine-looking steak and we're not hungry/starving and it's not our regular dining hours.

Good luck in your quest to find yourself the best possible and most rewarding lifestyle without P/PMO/MO.