Does that urge to search porn and artificial sexual stimulation go away completely? Or nearly go away completely? Does it get to the stage even if you ever wanted to search it you can easily refuse it?
Seeing as how their have been cases where you hear about relapse after a year of complete hard mode, I'd say most likely not. Think about it.. how many years did you spend hard wiring your neuro pathways to seek it out. These pathways will take as long to go away. Maybe if you're strong enough to go monk mode for half a decade the thoughts are gone
Mostly, yes. Entirely, no. I've relapsed after streaks of triple-digit days multiple times. I agree with Overforme here.
Please excuse me any grammar mistakes as English is not my first language but here's what I'm currently doing: I type whatever porn related keyword in the searching bar and google it. Then I immediately close down the page reminding myself of why I'm doing this challenge and how stupid porn is. I call it no porn workout 'cause I'm training my brain to say no and deliberately refuse to open a pornographic website and fap. I'd recommend to people who have some experience with nofap give it a try, to beginners it can be triggering. It's been really effective against the urge to watch porn so far.
In my experience it does not go away. I was a monk for 6 years and after i left and started living alone again i had strong urges to watch porn and masturbate, now i am trying to live free of it again. If i had a proven method to deal with the strong urges i think i could do it.
I dont think it ever goes away. But I think it does get easier to manage. By learning the tools to better manage it. Porn / sex addiction is like finding out you have diabetes. You have it for the rest of your life. But with a little more management you can live a happy , healthy life !
I have had an episode of this myself this weekend. I found myself looking at and finding images that aroused me, but were not porn, when I did open something that I considered porn I shut it down straight away. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. What I did notice is that I was far more aroused by an attractive clothed woman that I have been for a long time, I think this is a clear indicator of how going porn free has affected me. I got to a point where an image like that didn't even come close to arousing me, there had to be explicit nudity and there had to be action, but now once again I can be aroused by a still image.
It goes away a lot..I just find the behavior loser-ish..I know better now..and can't go back to the old ways. It's such a trashy habit..it's gross.
Does that urge to search porn and artificial sexual stimulation go away completely? Or nearly go away completely? Does it get to the stage even if you ever wanted to search it you can easily refuse it? I can't say for anyone else but for me I try not to worry about the future. If I do I have two sets of problems, ones that are happening now and ones that are happening in the future. For things like my retirement plan I take action now that will help (probably) in the future. It's very simple: I put money in a retirement plan. I don't need to worry about that, I only need to put in money and maybe think a bit about how much to put in. Either I have enough or not, I can't know for sure until that day comes. Strangely enough sobriety is very similar for me to my retirement plan. It's a question of how important is it. If it's important I'll put in "money" regularly. If course it's a different kind of coin entirely. And how important is it that I be confident that I'll have enough? Years ago when it looked like the biggest consequence of a slip was that I would feel ashamed I didn't prioritize investing in my sobriety because I was angry that there was no guarantee in the long term and it didn't seem that big a deal to feel ashamed in the future I already feel that way with great regularity. But when the consequences got worse and worse and more importantly when I became not and more cognizant of them I started putting a lot more into my "sobriety bank" because I can't afford to fall short. I'm still not guaranteed, there is no FDIC for this recovery process . But I've done all I can today and I ghave it all I had yesterday and I'll do all I can tomorrow. I'm making a great rate of return on investment, I hope everyone here is too.
If porn addiction is anything like other addictions, you can relapse no matter how long you've abstained. The good news is that in any addiction the chances of relapsing decrease over time, but no one can say with absolute certainty they will never relapse. There are numerous, well documented, cases of former addicts that have relapsed after many years of sobriety. I've had the chance to discuss this with several mental health professional over the years and they all agreed that addictions do not have a definitive cure because relapses are always possible. So, there is a certain amount of truth to the saying: "once a junkie, always a junkie". This doesn't mean you can't stay sober for the rest of your life. Many people do but you can never lower your guard when it comes to addiction. There is always the possibility of a relapse.
Dude I’m on 28th day right now. And my life used to revolve around porn. Whenever I used my laptop I used to have a second window open for searching and downloading porn. To answer your question, the urges do slow down. Although I sometimes crave the novelty of it but it’s not gonna lead me to a good place so I talk myself out of it. But the split-second decisions at this point are much easier. You just tell yourself not to engage in it and the urge dissipates.
I think that what happens after abstaining for a long time, is that the urges gradually go away, or maybe they go completely I don't know. Look at this video, this person went two years without porn and masturbation, he said that he have zero desire to watch porn: