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

Maybe that's why I keep having bunch of dreams and nightmares about stuff that's happened to me 10 years ago!!!???

 

I don't know. I'm just making the observation that our memories and our sleep are both screwed up and that they are intertwined. I'm sure the relationship is complicated. Some people think that the brain interprets fantasies as real experiences, especially when they are super-charged with emotions. If that's true, the brain would compile your sexual fantasies during sleep as new memories and incorporate them into your mental perception of your life and who you believe you are. The fact that we can have porn dreams, even in the absence of porn, is evidence that it is deeply imbedded in the brain.

All the evidence though is that time and abstinence is the key to resolving it.

The goal is to stop identifying with fake reality, forever. It isn't who we are. Porn makes our brains live in this conflicted duality between our real lives and our fake fantasy lives. We aren't designed for this. We have evolved to live and dream about the circumstances of our real life.

 

Day 192 - No orgasm

Had an interesting week last week. My mood started to lift, and I was more positive. Out of nowhere 3 women came forcefully into my life (via a dating app lol). But I was desired, they wanted me, I was a good date. One of them was the most attractive women ive ever met. I got to date number three with one of them yestarday, and talk of sex made me freak out with anxiety. I have no sexual feelings at all, but I really enjoy female company, I am searching it out.

I have been sort of practising mindfulness but I think my lift in mood last week is to do with PAWS or maybe the female attention. I dont know. Feel tired and shitty today again though, probably on a downer from freaking this girl out with my anxiety over anything sexual.

On one of my dates on friday I did drink two glasses of wine. that sometimes puts me on a downer for a few days. I didnt enjoy it so I must avoid alcohol, it is pointless for me and does me no favours...

Tinnitus has been bad again, and hand tremors have been apparent over the last few days. Are tinnitus and hand tremors common symptoms amongst you guys?

Still struggling to make real progress but last week was promising I guess.

 

7 months ish in. Can anyone relate to these persistant paws symptoms?

Hand tremors (can see my thumb and fingers tremoring when texting)
Tinnitus
Lack of pleasure from alcohol -> Three day hangovers where I feel miserable on day 3

The other obvious ones I still get are

ahedonia 24/7 with the occasional window of emotion
fatigue
low motivation - just sit or lie down staring for prolonged periods feeling empty
no feeling whatso ever in crotch or penis
no libido (I get nocturnal wood)
wet dreams have completely stopped

 

Honestly, if you are suffering from PAWS you can automatically assume any consistent psycho-physiology issues are concerned with PAWS. You essentially have both damaged your physiological system and psychological system. This is causing all types of weird and wonderful responses. You need to heal, and as you do, you'll notice a decline. When you're healed, all these weird and wonderful conditions, that are seemingly unexplainable, will cease too. Many if not all people report this phenomena

 

I wonder if the symptoms slowly decrease in severity or if they just suddenly flip. I'm approaching the 1 year mark and it seems that the pain has only intensified as time has gone on.

 

I‘m having tinnitus and many other body related symptoms. But my body symptoms slowly got better. Tinnitus isn’t as loud as usual which also contributes to the fact that I no longer suffer from it by welcoming and accepting it. Do I wish that it‘ll go away one day - yes, do I think about it actively anymore and are worried by it - no. Also my visual snow dramatically reduced. It’s still there but I know that it’s part of my overreacting Fight or flight reaction/ anxiety. Fight or flight tensions up your neck muscles in order to protect you from getting your neck broken in a life to death situation. This neck tension is one part why you have tinnitus. The other is your ears being supplied with more blood as this is increases hearing which could save your life by noticing any dangers earlier. Any symptoms vision related are due to your pupils being dilated in order to let more light into your eyes helping you again to see better in a life to death situation. Normally this phenomena’s are only meant to last for the duration of the dangerous situation you are in but as we know by now our fight or flight reaction is off the charts which causes a ton of symptoms and keeps the body in a constant state of stress. That’s why physical symptoms are so common around people having PAWS. Freaking out about them intensifies the symptoms as your anxiety grows stronger. I accustomed myself to them and while they are really annoying, for example the impairments in vision, I no longer fear them or get additionaly frustrated by them. I also had very very bad nasal breathing and it always felt like my nose is only 30% open and I have to draw air through an straw. I even considered getting an operation for that but due to Corona it got cancelled and I decided that I‘m gonna wait out the whole healing period before acting on any physical symptoms. But for now my nasal breathing got so much better!

 

From my knowledge of reading several success stories - changes don’t occur over night but the symptoms slowly start to decrease in severity. One guy on Reddit wrote that it took him about one month for the symptoms to disappear. At the start of this month he noticed a sudden switch in consciousness but then it took about 4 weeks for the switch to be permanent.

I don’t think you wake up healed one morning. I think your symptoms slowly loose their intensity while several parts of your brain are booting up again. You should definitely feel something being noticeable different . For example your fight or flight reaction finally calmed itself down and the cortex is able to override your emotional responses again but you are still left with symptoms and the thought patterns you accumulated over time. It might take you some weeks to feel safe and normal again as you leave this constant „dangerous“ situation and overwrite those bad memories.

Again this is just speculation from my side based on what I read. It’s still a riddle to me why we don’t have more Knowledge of PAWS. Often feels like we are the first people going through PAWS. Sure there are YouTube videos and some pages on google but through all my studying they seem to repeat themselves on the symptoms and can’t provide more detailed descriptions of what actually goes on when you for example leave the PAWS-Phase and enter full recovery. I guess many people start to be so busy with living and enjoying life again that most of them forget to put their experiences in words and are just fed up with the whole process and don’t wanna think about it anymore - which nobody could blame them for. I definitely told myself that I will write a detailed guide/FAQ on my whole recovery when I’m healed or even dedicate more time to write a small book about 20-40 pages as one guy did who went through PAWS from weed and releases a book on PAWS on Amazon several years ago. This seems like the only book on PAWS that I seem to find on the internet. I also have a scientific background as I study Social science, so I plan to back up everything by citations and put the puzzle of my personal experience and brain processes together. I know this is far ahead but I want to give something back to the world as PAWS is sometimes hell on earth.

 

I just want to say thank you to everyone who offers their testimonials here. Sincerely since I've been in paws, found this site and these discussions is the best thing that has happened to me. Without that I could very well have said to myself that I am going mad and sinking from relapse to relapse without understanding where all this ill-being comes from. And who knows what might have happened from there .... Despite the hell the Paws are, I am grateful to all of the contributors to this site!

Strength and honor

 

Day 193

I felt a funk yestarday, desolate, empty. I woke early this morning with good nocturnal wood. Its 07:51 and im feeling happy, I want to put music on and sing, I smile and I feel emotion, I opened up laptop and read some posts on this thread, I feel some emotion.

I go from from short infrequent windows of feeling great like this, to probably feeling desolate and dead again in the next few hours as I eat my breakfast and start my day. IT never stays no matter how I spend my day. Its like im given a small pleasure budget every now and then. I didnt do much positive yestarday, didnt meditate, I did masturbate a little gently with no erection before bed, not edging or anything like that, guess ill try that again this evening. My gut feeling is its nothing to do with that and just random changes as my brain rebalances...

 

Time for a progress report!

June - could barely get an erection, and got a depressive episode after the first orgasm.

August - could get an erection, but only without condom and I could still very easily overload my system with orgasms.

October - I'm still overloaded somewhat, but my erections are so, so good. And every thrust now feels like a shot of pleasure. Sex is AMAZING!

My mood is still up and down. But things are finally looking up, and I'm actually seeing progress! This is after a year on the journey, with a 10 time binge in December.

 

Food for thought:

A discussion about Parkinsons and the role of exercise in treating it, but lots of discussion about the processing of dopamine in the brain along the way. Given the debilitating cognitive problems I experience, I do wonder a lot about my long term prospects in this regard. Abusing dopamine cells in the brain for decades must have long term consequences for brain health?

Maybe a mild trigger alert is in order - Rhonda Patrick is quite attractive - she definitely draws attention in the comments for the "wrong" reasons.

 

A 42 yo. woman attractive? LOL

I watched her briefly on the Joe Rogan podcast and did not find her very convincing honestly. But well, she is only the interviewer here so it does not really matter.

The link goes through some gmx logout tho, i.e. you didn't paste the raw youtube link.

 

How is she not attractive with her looks and intelligence....

 

Maybe you are outliers but I am represented by this study. I don't find her looks very impressive. I bet she is not even fertile, and her tits point south. And intelligence cannot suck me so not really interested. "Intelligent woman" like in confrontational woman, contentious, entitled. No thanks, I rather choose submissive and feminine.

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PS: I'm sorry for the divergence from the PAWS topic.

 

There's a difference between finding a 22 year old MORE physically attractive than a 45 year old, and totally devaluing all women who don't meet your own sexual ideal. You even went after her fertility and intellect, of all things, just for aging out of your fantasy demographic. To me, this is a perfect illustration of how porn creates severe delusion in the mind in regards to human relationships. I don't share your views about women but in other areas porn addiction has definitely kept me from growing and maturing as a person. Addiction stunts all meaningful personal growth. I hope you receive more grace than you give others. I mean that sincerely.

Think about this. For the first time ever, 70 year olds can see endless amounts of 18 year old hardcore porn if they want to. Grandfathers are jerking off to their granddaughter equivalents. They might even be living in the delusion that young people would want to have sex with them. And since kids aren't attracted to old people, this can only result in deep deep unhappiness for the old perverts and their wives. I for one don't want to spend the rest of my life craving sexual validation from 20 year old girls. That ship has sailed.

We now live in a society where when you send your daughter to the doctor, she might be getting examined by someone who jerks off to anal doctor exam videos at night. When she goes on a date, her seemingly polite boyfriend has probably been watching pornhub videos 5 times a day for years. An entire generation is growing up thinking that porn videos and fetishes are totally normal and healthy. This whole thing is out of control and completely unnatural.

It disgusts me that I took part in it for so long. I want out forever.

 

I used to listen to and read stuff like this. I also read study after study about Alzheimer's disease because of my cognitive symptoms and I tortured myself with lots and lots of gimmicks and supplements that were supposed to help. The thing is that PD and ALZ are neurodegenerative diseases and hopefully there is no connection to our condition which is neuro-plastic. I'm not critical of exercise in any way though. I frequently cycle in the hopes that it will help. But for the most part, exercise just makes me feel more tired and more sore. It's a good thing, but not a cure for PAWS.

Incidentally, most of my forays into that literature was well before I knew about porn addiction and PAWS. Now that I know why I'm so ill, I don't exercise with the hope of a cure. I just think of it as supportive therapy. I know that time and abstinence are the main factors in treating PAWS unlike Parkinson's and ALZ where time is the least effective treatment.

I do think the stiffness seen in Parkinson's could be related to the stiffness I feel all over my body though. Dopamine signaling is intimately involved in movement. If mental inflexibility and physical inflexibility go hand in hand, I totally support the notion that actively creating physical flexibility can help release mental tension as well. I've held so much tension in the pelvis and low back over the years that I wonder if it is even possible to become physically flexible again. All the research I've seen say that it takes 6 months to a year to see progress but that anyone can do it. I've decided to commit to daily flexibility training while enduring the rest of my PAWS symptoms. For some reason, opening up the hips and pelvis feels like it's critical to restoring open sexuality and connection with the world. If not, at least it can only be healthy.

I only brought it up because of the connection to dopamine and exercise.

 

Maybe attractive in term of intelligence. But in term of looks "NAH"

 

Yeah man I try and tell this to whomever will listen, but people just don't want to hear it. Porn is a force.

Why do you think there's a whole industry for ED meds aimed at young males? No one is getting turned on by the real thing anymore. It's fucking vile.

During this reboot, as my mind has cleared, I've realized, as most adults probably do much earlier on in their lives, that humans are stupid. No one is really in charge. There aren't a bunch of benevolent grow-ups running the show from on high. We're a destructive species. We argue about petty human matters while the planet disintegrates around us. I swear that during every video on watch that deals with a specific type of animal, the narrator mentions how the species' population is 1/10th of what it was fifty years ago. And western america seems to be a never-ending bonfire. All the while, we warp our brains, with porn, into thinking that every girl at the grocery store is one conversation away from blowing us in the bathroom. Our minds are porn stars, while our dicks, bodies and instincts are simp-y voyeurs.

I guess all we can do is the abstinence version of recycling, which is abstention from porn. And I'll try and wear my "Porn Kills Love" t-shirt as much as I can.

One gift this addiction has brought me is an innate lack of trust in the "system". I question everything now. I don't just buy things at face value. I'm no longer part of the in-crowd. I'm an outsider. George Carlin would be proud. I guess I just don't trust very easily anymore. Too many folks are out to get ya so they can put a dollar in their pocket.

 

There is only shaming in your answer, you do not make a single point. Yes, you shame me because I'm a recovering PMO addict (but you are one too!) . That's a biased opinion and I hope you will realize after reading this. The fact that I have been addicted to porn doesn't mean that I am a pervert or that I don't understand human behaviour.

Look at the chart, are you saying that all those men are addicts or perverts because they prefer a 20 yo. woman? Are you ignoring the fact that since ancestral times men have been attracted to fertile women. Do you realise that attraction to fertility is the most healthy? Oh yes, the primary purpose of sex is reproduction, did you forget that? Can you imagine where would we be if our ancestors had all been attracted to old women? We would be extinct!

Let me guess, your attraction was more inclined to the recreational aspect, right? But you are disgusted by the instincts that we, as men share. Shocking.

So let me ask you this: are you attracted to old women? You want to have sex with them without the purpose of reproduction, just for the gratification? Is that a higher purpose? I am disgusted when I see thirsty men drooling for an old lady (not saying you are one of them). All yours but don't shame the people who don't share that inclination, which in my opinion is the deviated one.

As an addendum, not being attracted to an old woman does not mean you cannot love her. Those are different things, so I hope you don't conflate the terms. We are speaking about attraction!