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

Lol I'm done here. Carry on doing what you're doing. Guarantee 2 years from now you'll all still be posting on here talking about PAWS

I'm wasting my time and it always devolves into an argument.

I have plenty of replies and arguments to things people have just said to me but I don't have the energy for it anymore, it's like banging my head against a brick wall.

 

Can you tell more about that? How long did you take to recover at that time? Did you go through PAWS? and most importantly how come you become hooked again after going through the recovery pain and getting recovered??

 

That was 8 months ago. I've completely changed my opinion on this whole thing and recovered.

 

The brick what you're talking about is the wall you created yourself. I remember in one post you said you don't believe that the brain could not just heal itself, yet you claim you're healed and don't suffer withdrawals anymore because you changed the way you think about it. Kind of contradicting. Sounds to me the brain can heal itself

Funny assumption you think some of us here all still talking about PAWS over 2 years from now. I have healed from many drug withdrawals in a couple of months. I also felt healed about 4 times during 120+ nofap streaks. I never came to this forum after severe PAWS kicked in after extreme edge binge sessions. All "superpowers" left me after relapses. I never came to this forum before that.

I don't think I need 2 years or recovery and suffer PAWS for 2 years personally. If I stay clean, I hope to feel better in 6 months.

Anyways, goodbye. I will miss you

 

This forum, and this thread specifically, is one of the greatest insights into this epidemic that we have right now. To imply that we should stop documentation of our obvious withdrawals and support seeking behaviors jeopardizes mankind’s recovery from a horrible new affliction that has barely seen the light of day yet affects 99% of men, and women too.

 

Yep, our story has to be told.

The next generations will draw strength from this, especially if mankind doesn't stop seeking so much authority on the outside instead of within. Because if we don't, on the individual level ánd as a collective, we'll be seeking for authority in our own created AI monster eventually. And the way future generations will come into contact with porn content will be more disastrous then we now know

Sounds grotesque, but if you think about it.. I mean, porn+VR+AI.. ooff...

Also, true patterns eventually will become more clear if we keep sharing our experiences regarding NoFap, edging and PAWS

So, yeah, I think we definitely should continue telling our stories as they are

 

No. I made a post somewhere in this thread explaning my story:

""I been watching porn since I was 13 years old. I never had any problems with it until high speed internet porn tube sites and smartphone devices came out. I found Nofap in augustus 2013 after googling my symptoms. I found yourbrainonporn.com. I read about people having social anxiety, brain fog, insomnia, erectile dysfunction (PIED), depression, fatigue etc. Caused by their porn use. I maybe only watched porn for 15 min a day and finished it off, I never edged and never had multiple orgasms. I would not consider myself really addicted. I was just doing what every healthy sexual teen/adult should be doing (cough cough) Yet, I was suffering from all these symptoms and had no idea why until I found nofap.

I started the challenge and did my very first 150 streak. Had pretty bad withdrawal for about 2 months. Mostly depression, flu like feelings and anxiety. I felt amazing after 150 days and felt 100% healed. All brain fog gone, social anxiety gone, general anxiety gone, insomnia gone, fatigue gone, low libido gone, PIED gone, huge confidence, had succesful sex. The world had more color, girls looked amazing etc. Some people call it the nofap "SUPERPOWERS". My dopamine and endorphin system was working optimal again.

I felt a total reborn person with an active mentality, good sense of humor and tons of energy and motivation. I was like a new charismatic person. Then I relapsed a couple of times and all the negatives came back.

After many failed reboot attempts and relapse and withdrawal cycles, I managed another reboot 120+ days reboot and felt amazing again. I felt in touch with nature again and the rest of the positive stuff. AGAIN.

I relapsed and this time I lost all motivation and started relapsing almost every week for a year and a half. Again I had enough, and now the withdrawal was a lot worse and also had more physcial symptoms. Again I healed after like 110 days. (And even had 2 small MO with fantasy relapses during this streak, but I healed anyway.

I relapsed again and some years have went by by now. And now had a period of 1,5 years of 1 week streaks, relapse, another 1 or 2 week streak, and then relapse. During this short streak and relapse cycles I felt kind of normal. No real withdrawal symptoms, other than insomnia, anhedonia, some brain fog here and there and flu like feelings. I only felt a bit anxious and empty after orgasm.

Then came the period from april 2018 to august 2018. Thats when I lost total control. I binged relapsed and had long edge sessions every day, had a couple of orgams per day. I never really did this edging before april 2018.

I quit again on 18 august and after 18 / 20 days SEVERE withdrawals showed up. The symptoms were much worse than on the previous withdrawals. (Not as severe as benzo withdrawal), but still mentally and physically disabling. I had to quit my job. I experienced no windows and only waves with 24/7 symptoms.

This time I also suffered from very weird physical neurological symptoms. Body shaking, sleep paralysis, tremors, delirium, tinnitus, irritable bowel, severe insomnia etc. I must have had over 50 symptoms. Here is the post I made about the symptoms:

Also mental symptoms like anxiety, derealization, social anxiety and depression were on a whole other level. This withdrawal also lasted much longer than the last ones. Normally I was feeling fine after about 120 days, but with this last withdrawal after heavy edging, binging and multiple orgasms a day it took about 200 days before I started feeling a little better. But I was still suffering severe anhedonia, waves of social anxiety en insomnia.

Since august 2013 I never even bothered to visit a nofap related forum before my severe withdrawal began in oktober 2018. So for me it's total bullshit this forum is what causes extra psychosomatic symptoms. It's 100% withdrawal and this forum was actually helping me by showing me I was not the only one suffering. I totally disagree with whysolong.

Btw it's been 13 days since I last fapped. I felt horrible after the orgasm, social anxiety, insomnia, brain fog and even a bit agorafobia came back full force. But since a couple of days I actually feel pretty normal again. Does not mean I'm healed. No it's just the window and wave pattern that come with PAWS. Symptoms can always come back to bite you in the ass. I have experienced the window (feeling pretty damn good) and wave (feeling bad withdrawals pattern in many porn induced withdrawals)"

 

that means things will get worse before they improve

 

I mean.. for some people. No need to focus on them though. Make your own recovery and help those close to you.

 

Yes, I also think it will happen anyway. Sometimes the pain needs to be bad enough first to wake up to a problem

What we still can do though, is that which is within our own control

 

One of the worst symptoms for me has been this weird floating dizziness while lying down or sitting still eyes closed, sometimes it has happened with eyes open as well. It feels like I'm floating in an ocean, in a body of water. The last relapse but me into three weeks of heavy head pressure, it felt like I had my head in between a compactor and it changed places from the temples to the upper part of the head. I could walk however a couple of kilometers pretty well without feeling overwhelmingly lightheaded but after three weeks the head pressure went off and it was replaced by this extreme lightheadedness. I almost couldn't walk back home the other day while taking a walk outside, I had to take deep breaths and hold my breath in for a few seconds with every inhale in order to have the strength to walk back. Lying down for 15 minutes fixes it for a while.

Last night I had a partial wet dream where I woke just when I had an orgasm and only a little bit of semen leaked out but it put back this numbness and head pressure and the extreme lightheadedness went away and I could do a lot of physical stuff today without too much of a hassle. So it's definitely PMO related. It's also crazy how many porn and/or masturbation related dreams I've seen despite not watching any porn or p-subs or barely any TV at all.

 

Yep, I've often thought along these lines. Think of current technology as creating a virtual version of The Matrix right now, and how badly people are ensnared by various forms of technology addiction, including PMO already, just staring at their phones. Then think about increasingly immersive environments like VR, coupled with platforms that are designed to be addictive - whether it's social media, porn, gambling or whatever. As this becomes more advanced, and more people retreat to virtual ways of living, you can bet that a lot of these lives will include a heavy amount of porn. What does this do to people's brains and bodies?

Imagine people being able to live in Matrix-style pods or cocoons where they don't have to interact with the real world (or even get up for the toilet - they are literally plugged in to a machine...). As far as I can see, there is nothing stopping that for being the future for significant numbers of people in a couple of decades. Even if that isn't how things end up, we will get some form of VR becoming part of most peoples' every day lives fairly soon, and as it does then the experience of whatever you're doing becomes more intense - so people that wouldn't have a problem with PMO or PAWS right now might be sucked in, and people like us who do / have had a problem could have it even worse.

That's a lot of unhappiness for a lot of people. A lot of avoidable unhappiness. A lot of failed lives and suicides.

 

I thought about these pods a couple of decades ago actually and I was sure they'd be the future some day. I mean, with the speed of the current technology we could even see things like food and water pipes/chains directly connected to the body so the user would never need to have a reason to disconnect other than maybe for a toilet break. But VR is already here and it's just sad from what I've seen. They even have cuddling services in Japan for the lonely people where they just lie down and hug or pet one's hair for a payment. And about the suicides, I wonder how many lives could've been saved if the people were told about the dangers of PMO as I'm sure many have had it in their lives.

 

I just don’t get how you can break streaks while being aware of the glorious benefits you described you had and the vicious withdrawals that will follow and of course you probably know about kindling. Seriously need to work on willpower dude

 

Relapse can happen to anyone here. This forum is full of people relapsing. That's addiction. The problem is when you're feeling healed you forget about all the negatives (that's what happens when your prefrontal cortex is fucked) you been through and one day you're not on guard and your back into full blown porn binges. You should know willpower is not that easy to obtain in severe addicts.

I did beat a shitload of other addictions like high dose opioid use. Most junkies can't get clean from that in their whole life.
I have not taken that shit in years and never think about taking it anymore. There's still that devilish voice in me telling me to just use some pills, but I never did. Same with benzos, nicotine and pregabalin. Already beat the most of the beasts so I have plenty of willpower with that. Porn is the other beast I need to beat and made it multiple times to 120+ days and even 280 days. I see most guys on this forum relapsing every day or every 10 days. You could better tell those guys they need to work on willpower instead of me.

 

That's what's so weird about this addiction. Last year was the worst year in my life so far, I think there wasn't a single day I felt "normal" without the symptoms and I'd still relapse as soon as I got even slightly better and by slightly I mean not 24/7 head pressure and dizziness.

I want to read a book again, but I can't because the brainfog is so thick that even the simplest sentence might be hard to figure out sometimes. I read two pages of a book and then my brain says it's done. Any more than that and I'm stretching my limits of understanding. I'd love to be able to imagine all the characters and environments, but I simply can't or it takes a lot of brain power to do so. I remember back in my youth I couldn't leave a book down as it was so interesting to read on what would happen on the next page and when I finished the book I missed all the characters that became acquaintances while reading through it. I want to have that feeling again. I'd also like to study again, but I simply can't in my current state. This whole thing is a horrible trap that will ruin people's lives.

 

I feel you man. I'm dealing with almost the same things as you do.

The fucked up thing about this porn addiction is that it's always accessable 24/7, it's free and it's intertwined into you sexuality. The longer you abstain and the more healed you feel, some of that horniness and lustful feelings come back. Seeing a half naked girl gives me a dopamine rush that's just feels like a strong dopaminergic rush. Like a harddrug you take when your tolerance is low.

 

The same thing happens to me and the worst is that I can't control myself if I see something like it. It's like my whole body goes on autopilot mode and I can't stop browsing for more, even if it doesn't give me the dopamine rush anymore after the initial one. I'm literally a zombie looking for more but not getting anything out of it but more damage to the brain. That's why I avoid watching TV at all, and it sucks to be like that, and I've had to limit my browsing habits and everything. There was a bikini woman on a magazine while I was in a grocery store, luckily it didn't affect me much as I looked away in an instant, but I dislike it how it's socially acceptable for porn and sex to be ubiquitous that I can't avoid it even if I want to.

 

Yea this autopilot feeling I know too well. Whenever I get this intense dopamine rush and enormous lustful feeling. I just enter a trance mode full of dopamine and adrenaline and my prefrontal cortex is shut off. I don't care about the risks anymore. I forget about the pain of withdrawal it can cause and I'm only focused on searching that perfect hot nude scene so I can finish myself off. This mostly leads to edging and after I'm finished, I feel the guilt hit me and can only now think about the damage I have done to my brain again. Then I start feeling guilt and shame. I start talking negative about myself. And feel like I failed myself again and start doubting if I ever get enough willpower to quit is degenerate shit for always till the end of my life. Luckily these porn blockers work pretty well.

 

My heart is racing like mad whenever I've entered that zombielike state and my body starts to shake and I just lose all control and can't focus at all. It's like I need to have everything on my plate at the same time with multiple tabs opened and looking through pics and videos very fast. All because my brain thinks that if I see a half-naked or naked woman it should go all the way, so stupid.

By the way, how long you've had the loss of apetite and have you ever recovered it back? I think it's been 15 years since I've felt hunger. I can go a whole day without food but only when my blood sugar levels drop and I feel exhausted I need food. But I still try to eat regularly because it's not a healthy lifestyle.