I feel as though the longer I engage in the habit, the less I'm able to meaningfully resist it. After 10 years of compulsive masturbation I doubt that resistance is even possible. I've always wanted to avoid masturbation but my convictions never prevented the behavior. What if I am too far gone? Has anyone personally been in a similar situation and managed to eventually succeed? What did you have to do differently?
I've been addicted to PMO for about 8 years, and have been trying to stop for the last five, long before I discovered Nofap. It's true that Nofap has helped me tremendously - and still does - but what changed this time around were two things: 1. The realization that I'd never be able to maintain a healthy relationship with whomever I'll marry in the future. 2. Thanks to a life-changing period in my life that ended less than a year ago, I have much more willpower to hang in there. Therefore, I'd suggest you work on finding the right motivation and looking for ways to boost your willpower.
Resistance is always possible. I've been addicted to compulsive daily PMO binges for about 18 years. You always have an option to stop right now. ... How do you define success? Just abstention or personally growing by fixing your issues? Long term abstention is not sustainable if you don't figure out and address the cause(s) of your addictive compulsive behavior. Compulsive PMO is just a symptom of deeper problems.
I think the deeper problem is basically lifelong social isolation. I've never been able to figure out a way to break that cycle though. "Get a hobby" is easy to say when you don't have severe MO induced anhedonia which makes everything seem torturous and pointless.
Maybe the answer to your question is that you haven't reached a very bad situation yet where you face more serious issues in your life, thus you lack the motive to finally quit PMO. You should try harder IMO right now where the healing process is easier.
I experience depression/social anxiety and anhedonia right now but I still force myself to be at least somewhat social. I consider it must. If a friend calls and invites me out, I go even though I don't want to. Are you sure your anhedonia originates in MO, it could be just a symptom of depression, just like in my case. You have to take action. Every year postponed is a year lost. Things only spiral downward in PMO world if you don't fight against it. I don't want to bother you with my personal story, but trust me, you don't want to hit rock bottom like I did, before coming to senses. Binge PMO will only worsen problems you're having.
I'm just under 6 years sober from alcohol, that experience taught me a lot in regards to how kind one has to be to themselves when wanting to change harmful behaviour. I had about 5 major false starts (not including days where I simply just tried not to give in to the desire to get drunk,) in the year or 2 before I actually stopped. I experienced the phenomenon known as kindling during that process, in which I would escalate my drinking every time I relapsed and the behaviour became more deeply ingrained. The same concept exists for psychological and process addictions such as porn and sexual addiction. I'm using that experience to inform my approach to quitting porn. I've been gunning for hard mode as I'm convinced of its' efficacy, but after several wilful relapses I've decided simply to concentrate on simply avoiding P until I'm established in that before approaching advanced practice... Some of the things I've learned from getting sober: - I will fail repeatedly in trying to establish abstinence from any harmful behaviour. - 'Miraculous'/complete spontaneous recovery is at worst a lie, at best something that happens in the absolute minority of people. - Eliminating the behaviour is just the start. True recovery necessitates direct confrontation with the suppressed emotional content driving the addiction, ie facing states of mind, memories etc which would classically result in relapse. - The 'chaser' or the progressive loss of control or ability to meaningfully analyse ones' engagement in PMO in this case, is a mental state with a lot of initial energy but of short duration. Ie, it feels completely insurmountable in the moment and is almost completely overwhelming, but it is easily broken through. Once passed, it is gone until the next episode of craving. - One must be willing and able to endure the above indefinitely. I was told I'd feel the positive emotional effect of not drinking within 1-3 months. It was a full year before I started to feel any different whatsoever, in regards to clarity of mind and the lingering psychological withdrawals. - Change of mental state is inevitable with sustained abstinence. It's a game of patience so long as item 3 is being factored in. (naaaah, it's torture really- the conviction that the ultimate state of abstinence is vastly superior to the short-term state of indulgence has to become strong enough to win every time. Depending on what's driving the addiction, reaching that state can involve ploughing through so much mental wreckage that it renders you physically unable to move as you experience all of the emotions and memories associated with it.) Ultimately: It is entirely possible to halt the progress of an addiction indefinitely so long as one is sufficiently prepared for the reality of what that incurs. Relapse is inevitable in trying to establish that state of being.
Short answer to resistance is it is not futile, but by itself not that effective. As to your last question of what has to be done differently, I would suspect a LOT of things, maybe pretty much everything. While I respect willpower, that relates to the first point about resistance. It is only an effort based approach, and I think it has to be in a larger context of a skill based plan. And as we change and/or discover more about ourselves, we have to be open to changing up our strategy - it only makes sense. It doesn't take a lot of knowledge to know if you go down a dark ally your chances of getting mugged are higher than going down main street, it's the same with relapse prevention with PMO. So generally without even qualifying for specifics of any given individuals situation lessening the likelihood is a good strategy, and if you combine that with resistance and willpower for when it does happen then that's a much better and more comprehensive approach.
Man, some very good insights, thank you. I never heard of "kindling" phenomenon but I surely relived it over and over again during my nearly 2 decades long struggle with binge PMO addiction. The worst relapses are the ones that come after long period of abstinence (+3 months). My compulsive behavior escalated every time after abstinence. It ended up in hours long daily binges which lasted a few months until complete body exhaustion. Also content became weirder and weirder to the point I got turned on only by some FU violent shit at the end. yea, hard mode is a hard struggle but it gets easier with every month (well at least cravings to view P and M, but PAWS are real shit you can't run away from). I also established differentiation between a relapse (full blown return to PMO) and a slip (one time weakness) to get rid of all or nothing mentality. The worse thing you can do is to feel you've failed because of a slip and drown your misery in full blown relapse instead of carrying on like nothing has happened. I've been guilty of doing that for the last 10 years (what can I say, I'm a slow learner).
