P.A.W.S. - what are they, cure, duration

Sorry I forgot to mention: almost all people who come down with benzo PAWS report socalled "windows and waves".

This basically means periods with very heavy symptoms (think: acute) after sometimes months of feeling healed. This will pass mate, really, it does. Please please don't touch those benzo's because it will reset most of your progress

 

Yeah I messaged quit a few people about it at the time because I could only find a few people going through the same shit.

Wasn't this around 8 months ago ? Lol

 

Thanks for your reply! I know this isn’t benzo withdrawal, these symptoms happened immediately after searching for that Facebook picture, I didn’t take benzos until about a week into suffering after that exposure. I’ve had my brain light up from porn many times after long periods of abstinence and know what that feels like and I can say 100% that I fired up those pathways again and that I have now once again lost my libido that I fought so hard for. I am aware that benzo use is very dangerous though, I have been staying under a milligram daily for the past week though and haven’t taken them prior for about a year. My duck is now shriveled and it has been looking and feeling fine for months now. I just can’t get past the fact that I slipped in such a small way and it has had such a big effect. In my early streaks a slip or scrolling Facebook had minimum affect but after long abstinence relapse cycles it is devastating. It lit up all those pathways and my required pathways are now dormant and much weaker than the ones I just lit up. Somewhere in me I knew to stay away from Facebook scrolling for about the past 6 months at least and in a moment of fog from anxiety I slipped very very briefly but the damage was done. I was literally pushing a handtruck at work in one hand and scrolled through Facebook with the other when my boss walked out of the room, I realized what I was doing and I closed the phone and went back to work but started getting symptoms immediately, the worst of which have been nightmares, panic attacks, at first premature ejaculation feelings, and now dead dick with no libido a loss of confidence and personality. I am stunned and in shock that my 14 months of abstinence and my 6-8 months of feeling great are gone along with all my motivation and now instead of intermittent fasting, exercise, and clean eating I am spiraling out of control and have told those closest to me that I am having suicidal thoughts. I’ve been having so many new opportunities in my passion, my job, and romantic partners open up and I have sabotaged it for a second of non pleasure. I’ve literally failed myself in the deepest way and am having trouble proceeding.

 

Personally I've neve had issues with benzos during my heavy drug use but I know people that did. Mirtazapine seemed to be a miracle drug for recovering benzo addicts but I have no idea why.

 

Okay so I've read your reply, thanks

Still I would stress on the fact that you must never ever ever touch a benzo again. Not even a 0.000001 mg of it.

Read about tolerance withdrawal symptoms. And about the windows and waves.

Please look into the Ashton Manual before you go about drawing conclusions.
I really beg you.

 

I believe you when you say its from exposure, I'd ignore those talking about benzo withdrawal if you haven't been addicted to benzo's or taken them consistently recently for a long period - its not relevant advice.

I would assume if you don't do anything crazy and ride the wave out these current symptoms will subside in a few weeks - you should midnfully keep note of when they stop and then let the rest of us know your results

 

Ok I appreciate your concern and I will consider your advice. I am aware of the dangers and that is why I quit all drugs within the past 2 years up until this slip. If you have any advice on that I would love to hear it because that is what is really eating at me and what I am seeking here and I’ve seen your posts and you seem to have similar severity of paws

 

The thing I cannot really help you with is understanding the underlying issues/causes of repeated relapse into drugs or other substance abuse.
But it may help to seek counseling on unknown childhood or other subconscious issues. FasterEFT and Progressive Mental Allignment are some examples of good tools to help you with that. But I can't know if your CNS is ready yet to handle deeper issues. You have to decide on that

 

So 3 weeks ago I was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life and had quit nicotine, alcohol, and a host of other drugs as well as practicing yoga everyday for over a year and very routine exercise and diet regimens. I had a big presentation at work coming up and was contacted by a girl I went no contact with 2 years ago. I was seeing her and opened up about pied and she went for another guy. This devastated me 2 years ago. Along with the holidays and work being extremely busy, the presentation at my other job approaching, and the out of the blue contact from this girl I searched Facebook out of anxiety. I just wanted to think about a different girl than the one who contacted me so I distracted myself for 30 seconds by searching her Facebook, I came across an album that looked like it would have arousing pics and I clicked it and found a pic. I exed out right away but my paws symptoms came back strong. This demoralizing event left me with panic attacks and extreme anxiety and sleeplessness for a week, I finally caved to cigarettes and a Xanax to calm down and get some sleep and relief. I don’t think it’s that unusual to seek relief after feeling like I lost 14 months of progress and happiness. Every pmo style relapse after a long streak has felt like it completely starts me over or sets me back even worse than the time before, it’s a complete mental breakdown and when each streak appears to take longer and I just did 14 months I lost it after a week of symptoms that wouldn’t subside. I never thought I’d be back here and I promised myself and did everything I could for 14 months! I would consume content daily and read all I could about rebooting and was finally seeing progress after 3 years of struggling just to lose it in 30 mindless seconds

 

yes, 8 months ago, it seems you're 90% healed now aren't you?

 

Ha, don't make the same mistake I did - this time last year I seemed to be defying gravity - I'd had a relatively long (healing) streak at the end of 2018 and was feeling great, and for about a month (Jan / feb 2019) managed to PMO once a week without any serious consequences. In other words, I seemed to be able to PMO and get away with it.

Then things started to get worse, and didn't respond to resting from PMO - still did it, but much less frequently. Still recovering now from the worst symptoms of my life, 1 year later, and it's far from over. My take on this is that some people can get benefits from long periods of abstinence, and then PMO without seeming to relapse, in terms of symptoms. But, it will catch up with you eventually.

 

IT seems PMO is completely done for us once we are healed.

What about normal sex? It still realeses dopamine, also fantasising is the same. I would assume one night stands would also cause symptoms I remember reading a guys story from here about that too

 

I totally agree. Modern life is a huge uncontrolled experiment, and we are at the cutting edge. I know that sounds pretentious, but... there are a lot of people hurting, and I'm sure many don't know why. Hopefully this helps. And maybe one day the science will catch up and explain exactly WTF is going on!

 

I'd say 95% is probably more accurate

 

I'm currently reading Cupid's Poison Arrow by Marnia Robinson - it seems that conventional sex with a partner is almost as bad (!). I think orgasm is the enemy. And edging.

 

I don't think @Hisself is suffering from any benzo withdrawal. The problems started after he quit porn. In order to get benzo dependancy you have to have short or longer acting benzos in your system everyday for over 2 weeks. After weeks of use the GABAA receptor subtypes change their conformation and desensitize the GABAA subunits and start to uncouple the composition on the iononotropic GABAA receptor. That's when in get's dangerous. They can also work on epigenetics, so yeah, dangerous stuff when abused. But sometimes a life safer.

A benzo here and there won't cause any dependancy problems. As long as you keep breaks between them
And I doubt they really mess up your reboot. They are not dopaminergic. I'm a benzo fiend since 2014 and many subjective experiences with them and read tons of stories on benzobuddies. Ive read the ashton manual multiple times too. I'm pretty sure you don't have benzo withdrawal.

1. It's eather a little setback after watching some sexual content. If this is the case the symptoms will die down soon enough and definitely did not undone any real progreas you made.

2. It's part of the window and wave phenomenon that most PAWS suffererss experience. Good days/weeks for a couple of days or weeks will tuen into bad days or weeks with increased symptoms and make you feel like you made no progression at all. Don't be discouraged. It's all part of this PAWS phenomenom. I suffered from the exact windows and waves moments my first reboots and healed anyway. Sometimes it can get worse before it get better.

 

This is worse than a drug
I've seen guys claim they were addicted to heroin and the withdrawal symptoms were less severe than PMO withdrawals, that lets you know how deep this shit goes
the reason I managed to achieve 3 years and 2 months without PMO was due to this awareness, once I began studying the science behind high speed internet porn, how it affects the brain, and how this is pretty much akin to cocaine I quit cold turkey
and I found out about nofap in the end of 2014, in the bodybuilding community, the study showing that one week of abstinence can increase testosterone by 140%, I tried the "challenge" and needless to say I couldn't last a week without porn
then in 2015 the first symptoms started to hit me, lethargy, fatigue, tiredness, PIED, for a few months I didn't know what wa going on, was still consuming porn and then I ran accross your brain on porn, the nofap community and the rest is history, on november 2nd of 2016 I quit cold turkey, never binged ever since, a couple of relapses in 2017 and 2018, no relapse in 2019 and going strong from now on. There's no turning back
another point was, as soon as I started my reboot at the end of 2016 I spent the next year just listening, watching and consuming nofap content, videos on youtube etc.. I followed a lot of guys, black white guy in america, mikkois, hayden rose, anthony decide, ajax, gabe dawg, noah church, gabe deem and many many others that I don't remember, I swear, I consumed hundreds of hours of nofap content, after that, all the information surely became ingrained in my subconscious mind, there's no turning back, just the thought of watching porn is enough for me to get a sick and disgusting sensation in my gut
I literally brainwashed myself into not consuming this drug, I was pretty successful in my reboot, just 3 or 4 relapses in the first year and they were all deliberate, not because of an uncontrolable urge, but because I was trying to jumpstart my libido in the midst of severe withdrawal symptoms, needless to say, as many of you may already know at this point, to relapse in a flatline is the last thing you wanna do, you'll feel more destroyed and 10 times worse afterwards

 

I agree 100% with @SLeepisLost - I also have experience with benzo's

I also am going through the window and wave phenomena of PAWS, I felt great until a few days ago, now attacked with weird sex fetishes again and sex thoughts, brain throbbing and terrible sleep. It's been exactly 93 days since this last happened like this

 

Impressive - would you say you've fully recovered? And at what point did symptoms such as anxiety from PAWS dissapear for you?

 

Even if this cycle is the first and it was caused by seeking behavior? As in seeking out something arousing