Long PMO sessions (many hours), edging addiction & extreme withdrawals, PAWS

I think Indurian was quoting my post from earlier in the thread.

 

I was. My bad. I messed up when I quoted the original post

 

I experienced these withdrawal symptoms too, and they will get better in time. It can take a while though, so you have to be patient.

See my post here if you want more info:
https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?threads/strange-obscure-problems-with-my-body.288305/#post-2704138

 

I just relapsed after nearly a month no P, M or O. I started having really graphic pornographic dreams and flashes of my favorite pornstars getting drilled during the daytime starting week 3, which is when my true self began to shine bright like it did before I discovered edging. I’ve been watching porn since I was about 7 or 8, and always felt shy and low key Unconfident for most of my life and sometimes struggled making eye contact with anyone after I got REALLY addicted to porn after my ex broke my heart. It was only a couple years after that when I discovered edging at about 26-27 and that was another demon altogether. Charmander skipped Charmeleon and jumped straight to Charizard and even though I caught myself after just 2 days of edging, I’ve been fighting off tears and exude a “leave me the fuck alone” type aura that repels everyone within sight. It’s fucked. Like legitimate biochemical magnetism shifted polarity. I felt amazing after those 3 weeks of sobriety! I do missed the real me. To sum up the list of symptoms: ZERO memory, concentration or interest in anything at all, extreme apathy and nihilism, watery eyes & poor eye sight, insomnia x inability to dream (if I do sleep), Incredibly unfulfilling yawns and irritability. Oh yes, most importantly emotional death. It’s like all the warmth inside dies, I have no emotions at all. Like I have no soul during this time until I recover.

 

This thread was very relatable to a lot of the problems I’ve experienced.

I first started using P around 18 years ago, with it increasing around 14 years ago when I was 16. Virtually the whole time for those 14 years I was consuming regularly, and was practicing edging often without knowing what the name for it was. I would spend hours searching for the perfect clip until I would unintentionally O and shamefully close all the tabs I’d be clicking on.

In college, this developed into camsites and chatting with camgirls while edging for hours. I didn’t spend money at first, but once I did I realized I could not control myself and would avoid cam sites as best I could. I then substituted this with long PMV videos often geared towards edging as well as JOI/femdom clips that promoted edging.

The past year, this spiraled into one specific girl that makes ASMR/hypno-style videos that typically revolve around M only for the purpose of pleasure and to deliberately not orgasm/watch clips on repeat

The current streak I’m on is the first effort I’ve done to break this habit. The first two weeks were awful. I’ve had back pain for a few years after a car accident, but once stopping PMO completely I would wake up with pain throughout my body. It would hurt to walk, I would fall asleep around 5 hours after waking up, I had memory issues, and I was constantly getting urges.

The worst part still is that despite how terrible I felt, I can sense my brain still wants to go back. I keep telling myself it’s not worth it, that I’ll feel the way I did when I was first rebooting, but the self-rationalization is really difficult to deal with at times.

 

Bump

 

I never understood how most guys could find a video, knock one out and move on with their day. To me that's like going to a theme park, going on one ride and then going home. I on the other hand want to go on every ride and not leave until the gates are about to close. When I figured out I could prolong the pleasure by not nutting, that's all I ever did and it wasn't until it was too late before I realised just how much damage I was doing to myself. I thought I'd managed to hack the system, I didn't even have to clean up afterwards.

Tbh I was even doing this before I found porn and now that I look back, I can see that my issues began there so whilst porn has certainly made it even worse, it was the way I was masturbating that was the foundation for all of my problems. Sure I could bust one out in a minute if I wanted to but in the moment it feels so good why would I want it to end. I can never have a "healthy" relationship with masturbation and clearly can't with porn either so it looks like I'll be on hard mode indefinitely.

I remember when I was 24-25 I stumbled across an article saying how bad edging(I didn't even know there was a word for it until then) was for the brain but I totally dismissed it, if only I'd taken more notice of it.

 

I thought I was doing something positive for myself. I was so deluded back then when it came to pmo. I wore myself and my adrenal glands out till this day. Before I discovered nofap subjects or channels late 2013, I used to be so tired and kept wondering why I was like that. Then I searched and found nofap on Google and YouTube explaining most the reasons for my fatigue. They said if you could not go 1 or 2 days without watching or fapping, then you're an addict. I was like no way I'm not no addict till I tried and saw for myself.
In 2014, I finally completed 5 to 7 days and noticed a big difference on how I felt. That's when I realized pmo was the PROBLEM.

30% part of me still think I can pmo in moderation. Also I've noticed I kept going back to it when I'm stressed or received a bad news.For instance, had a lot of close family members that passed away between 2022-2016. The last 5 years I went to so many funerals. I was frightened and used pmo as an escape knowing it's a poison for my well being.

 

What an amazing analogy, that's been my approach to PMO and PM (edging, I guess) for over 50 years now. I started at age 11, long before the internet, and even VHS (I'm 61). I would PMO to magazines for hours. Then VHS came along and I was all in. In 1992 a friend of mine told about something called the internet. This was before visual browsers. To find what you were looking for you had use these crazy search protocols with names like Archie and Jughead. But I knew there was porn out there and I was going to find it. Thanks to Archie and Jughead I found an unbelievable amount of it, all in written form. Pretty soon AOL was a thing, searches got easier, and images had mostly replaced the erotica. Short video clips followed. I was at that PMO amusement park every day, sometimes for 3-4 hours at a time. Due to the long download times of low bandwidth and dial up modems, it amazes me to think I was only able to consume 1/20th of what I can now in any one sitting.

I got married in 1997 and soon thereafter my wife discovered what was up to in the home office all those hours. To save the marriage I joined SA and told myself I was going to stop. After about 2 months of PMO sobriety, my sponsor actually told me that in SA, you could watch porn and still be considered "sober," as long as I didn't "have sex with myself or another outside of marriage." Exactly what my addict brain wanted to hear. Just as internet speeds were starting to pick up, too. That started a 10-year edging binge that still staggers me when I think about it. I would go to work, close my office door, and edge. Every day, sometimes for 5 or 6 hours. And I would go to my SA meetings and pick chips for being sober, and tell my wife I was sober, too. Un freaking believable. After 10 years I quit SA, and soon thereafter added the O. It was incredible, I could watch some videos, M and O, and be finished in 20 minutes. That lasted about 2 weeks. Soon I was back to 2-3 hours of PMO pretty much daily.

Until my wife found out, again, last month. I've been hardcore porn free since Sept. 3, but have relapsed 4 times: Porn substitute MO with R rated movies. After all this time, I'm grateful that I know more about my addiction, the dopamine cycle, how the trauma of my childhood set me up, the betrayal trauma I've caused my wife, twice now, for starters. Sorry for the indulgently long post, this thread hit a nerve. Grateful to be here, looking at a long road ahead.

 

Me as well, it almost always had to be the "right one" to O. One of the many strange behaviors and quirks of mind that result from this addiction I guess.