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

Relapses are definitely slowing it down. You gotta be perfect, in my eyes. Sadly, there is no room for error. It's the fucking worst.

 

Sound like you're an extreme case and need to do hardmode. Relapsing repeatedly while you in PAWS will compound, worsen, and prolong your symptoms. Unfortunately for some of us, it could take up to 24 months of serious abstention to start seeing results. You gotta suffer from the withdrawals in order to break free from the addiction.

 

I was an extreme case of addiction. Like 5-6 times a day from a young age before puberty. It makes sense why my withdrawal is so long. I just always question if i just dream of a better life or if me getting clean is actually gonna give me a better life. Pure anhedonia and anxiety since PAWS hit me. Have lost myself for 4 years

 

Addict for 30+ years here. I have lost myself in PWS symptoms for 12 years. It never goes away. Get clean, stay clean until you're normal again no matter how long it takes. You have no choice. Never relapse. No sexual fantasy of any kind. Reject it immediately and eventually it will stop popping into your head. I would give literally anything to go back and be 23 again with that information. You'll be 25 before you know it, trust me. You can have a normal life or you can be here when you're 50. The choice is yours. You can choose the red pill or the blue one.

I've thought all of the following over the years:

I have MS
I have OCD, depression, social anxiety, PTSD, etc...
I have an undiagnosed white matter disease
I have early stage dementia
I have magnesium deficiency
I have a genetic folate/MTHFR issue that's doing this
I have an undetectable B12 or folate deficiency
I have psychotic depression
I need to water fast
I need to juice fast
I need to heal my gut
I need to clean my colon
Etc, Etc, Etc....

The truth is, I have a severe untreated addiction. Over the years I escalated and escalated it until there was no where else to escalate to. Just like with any other drugs of abuse, there is a limit to how high you can get. Once you reach that point, you've reached the end of tolerance and you transition from being a functional addict to a non-functional addict. The brain becomes conditioned to seek pleasure and nothing else because it can't feel anything else.

Most people who show up to nofap.com are functional addicts. I suspect that the PWS thread are full of mostly non-functional addicts who have reached the limit of how much euphoria can be obtained from self-pleasure. The only question from there is how much damage has been done? How badly did you overload and damage your brain with hyper-stimulation?

Recovering from that is extremely hard work. The threshold for pleasure is so high at this point that no normal pleasure registers at all. All you can feel is anhedonia, anxiety, and confusion. You lose your executive functions and all decision-making is slow and difficult because you can't feel any preference for any outcome about mundane things. You wait for your brain to tell you what to do and nothing happens. You forget anything you learn within a day or two of learning it because positive feedback and reward is integral to how your brain determines what goes into long term storage. When you can't feel reward, your brain can't prioritize what is important. You can still access your existing long-term memory ok, it's just hard to create new long-term memories. Your short-term memory is fucked because you can't hold on to and organize multiple variables that you don't care about. Enthusiasm is a critical aspect of short-term memory access. Life is a fog until you can feel gratification for your efforts again.

I'm only telling you this because questioning whether you're experiencing PWS is the first logical step to relapsing. If you convince yourself that it's all being caused by some other unknown thing, well then there's no reason not to indulge in PMO again. Now, you're back to square one. Don't do that my friend, swallow the red pill and don't look back.

 

Exchange the word PMO with thinks like Coke or Cigarettes. I’ve had a streak of not doing coke 6 months then a relapse, several 3 month streaks of not doing coke. Then a longer streak of 7 months with one time doing coke but just a little. Your brain still values PMO as something tremendously important and the only way to get rid of this is to drying-out your addiction pathways to the point your brain no longer uses those pathways. As one person here said earlier, sorry that I don’t remember the name, don’t think in streaks. Think in a decision for the rest of your life. If you’re addicted to coke or cigarettes you wouldn’t be planning a streak - you would ideally planning to leave it behind forever. If you find the idea of never masturbating emotionally disturbing and saddening then you know your subconscious still values PMO a lot. For me masturbation and porn lost it glow and craving a certain point and I never looked back. I crave real sexual encounters sometimes but not porn-like sex. I just want to be very intimate and connected with a person and not focused on my own pleasure ever again. Before any of this could happen it still takes a long time and requires a woman that I truly love from the bottom of my heart, otherwise I would be returning to the lustful monster I left behind.

Make a decision for the rest of your life mate and stick with it or else you will waste more years. There is no middle way if you’re addicted since this young age. If you are able to go 6 months without a relapse then you can go forever.

 

I'm currently at 20months, and upto 18 months had a single 24 hour relapse and binge at month 9. So thats one PMO session in 18 months, and I still struggled with PAWS. I've had 7 relapses in last 2 months to full sex (which is just as bad) and around 10 MO, and one 1PMO, and am currently back on a streak.

This really is a tough journey, I believe I was a bad case, on top of PMO since 12 (now 33), and sleeping with 3-500 partners, I had a bad cocaine habit for the last 2 years before I quit.

With that said, I still feel so much better than the first 90-120 days. I really want to get a 3-6 monkmode streak up to so how I heal, I definately have healed since the beginning, not just physiologically, but psychologically too. Still my brain aches 24/7 near the front everyday

 

Im gonna copy this message and read it every morning.
Thank you for that message man. Im curious, what is your longest hard mode streak?

And i defiently know its paws. I wont relapse, this "streak" is for life.

 

Yeah, that is a great post. I think it pretty much sums up the position most of us are in.

 

You're welcome sikreodds97. As of now I'm at 239 days. Any streaks I had prior were short lived because I was in denial and I didn't believe that my life-long porn habit was the cause of my symptoms. My symptoms are so bad and debilitating that it was unfathomable to me that it was being caused by PMO because I had done it for so long. Now I know it was a long process of escalation and deterioration. But, I'm so stupid I had to rule everything else out through trial and error for years before I could accept that porn addiction had actually destroyed my brain. For years I woke up every day seeking a cure to my giant list of symptoms. I went to every kind of doctor and had every kind of test and scan. I followed every crackpot theory about brain health that the web has to offer and purchased many $1000s in supplements and psychiatric drugs. Nothing helps and every bogus explanation always prepares you for 90 or more days of dedication before the "cure" starts to kick in. It always fails, symptoms are usually made worse, and more time is permanently wasted.

I now know that even then, it was the addiction process talking because finding an external explanation for my symptoms would mean that PMO wasn't the real cause and I could just keep my bad habits and be functional again. Once I accepted it fully that PMO was the real cause, I knew that quitting permanently is the only option. So that was 239 days ago and here I am.

If my experience helps anyone I'm happy to share anything I can. The only thing I won't do is to coddle failure and relapses. I see that as totally unhelpful to everyone because we know that a zero tolerance approach is required for recovery. That's the hardest part to accept and the part that no one wants to hear. Nobody can leave the door to failure open and expect to succeed. It may seem difficult and unfair but those are the rules. I plan to keep posting here until I'm healed and then never coming back. You will break free from this too because you want it out of your life forever!

 

Thats great man. Have you had any "good" days in the reboot proccess? Days where it nofap benefits have hit you? I had it in the start of my journey before paws kicked in!
Also i have a theory that semen retention litterally can cure everything. Its insanely powerful for healing, so keep on your streak and it will defiently heal you

 

I can still only rate my days as bad and less bad at this point. According to @Don Quixote and others who have come before us that is par for the course at 8 months in, at least in severe cases. All I can really report at this point as success is the end of intrusive porn thoughts and dreams, and a noticeable weakening of the tinnitus that's been around for the last decade or more. The fatigue and cognitive/emotional dysfunction is still there.

I saved this great post by Don. It mimics my experience so far.
https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?t...hey-cure-duration.231859/page-56#post-2598561

 

I'm almost 3 years in PAWS plus(+) 3 years with ACUTE withdrawal symptoms.I've recently done 16mo hardmode with some relapses here and there followed by a loss of cognitive impairment mid 2018. Before that I was struggling with symptoms to even go to work let alone performing the tasks given. I had to pull myself from society in mid 2018 till this day.

I'm saying this because I don't want people with severe cases thinking once they done 90 something days that they're close to healing. There's this Fapstronaut "Darksetour" who used to pmo heavily 6 months or 9 months and he had to complete 18 months hardmode in order to return to normal.

 

Another great post that I can really relate to. I think the main difference in my case is that I realised that PMO was the cause of my problems 12 years ago, but my problems were less severe back then, and I did develop some degree of control. Over time I went from whacking off every day to once every 2 weeks (over the space of a decade!), and felt that that I was making steady progress. When you mentioned about being a functional addict in a previous post in this thread, that was me. I knew I had a problem, but thought I could handle it, and was re-assured by my modest progress overall. Then last year (although looking back it there were signs of deterioration in 2018) I went from being functional to non-functional. My symptoms deteriorated badly. I haven't worked since last summer, and have struggled to do basic things like get to the shops and clean my house. Work, for the foreseeable future, is just not possible.

Every day my first thought is "I wish I could go back to 'such and such a time' and just tell the younger me what I was actually doing". I know I would have struggled with urges as a younger man even with this knowledge, but if I had just moderated my activity - like twice a week instead of three times every day for hours on end, that would probably have been enough for me to have avoided the many health problems that have ruined my adult life.

Now though, I have to quit completely. I have no illusions about that. At the moment it's easy to resist the temptation because I'm so exhausted I rarely have days where I am tempted at all. For me the real work will come when (or "if", as it currently feels) I start to improve, and the sap rises.

 

This is my case too. I am glad to say I am seeing some slight improvements lately, after 16 months —will report if the improvements are consistent throughout a few weeks.

Abstention is the only solution.

 

Thanks Dave. I was functional for years and years as well. The difference was that when I was functional I was looking at magazines and slow speed 14.4K modem internet and incorporating porn fantasy with thoughts about my girlfriend and my life. By the time I was non-functional I was on porntube lost in thoughts about Asian lesbian strapon midget ladyboy hypno alien cheerleader abduction movies. Ok, not literally, but you get the point. Looking back, these are two very different behaviors. I think the extreme content and endless novelty is what makes us hit critical mass in our brains. There's literally no where else to go from there. When I was functional I didn't have access to or any interest in extreme or unnatural topics, I only watched lesbians really. Novelty was self-limiting because you had to go out and rent a limited number of scenes from a store. If you relate it to a drug, it's like the dose was measured back then. I could never have jerked to a VHS movie for 4 hours at a time, day after day.

Think about it, Playboy came out in the mid-50s and was highly controversial at the time because it showed boobs and butts. Prior to that, most humans on Earth had absolutely no clue what pornography even was. For millions of years ALL people were 100% porn free. There was no way to hijack the brain with fake sexual imagery and probably nobody was jerking off for more than 15 minutes at a time. Their brains mostly were only interested in replaying real experiences, mostly because they were lonely and genuinely horny at the moment. You had to get a girl to take her clothes off if you wanted to actually see the goods underneath. That process involves personality, courtship, chemistry, and all sorts of personal interaction. That's how nature designed it because that's the part that gives meaning to any of it. No normal person before the year 2000 would ever be attracted to a woman with a football stuffed up her ass.

With high speed internet, it's like you're allowed to keep overdosing on porn dopamine everyday. A brand new full-on psycho hardcore porn scene is as easy to find as your next cigarette, and it's totally free. Kids nowadays are jerking off to porn that I would have never even considered when I was growing up. There is no upside at all, it's all evil. It's an evil drug that is designed to kill your soul and disconnect you from humanity and the people you love. It reprograms your brain to devalue other people into nothing but walking talking orifices to be used to satisfy your own pathologically amplified impulses. It secretly tricks you into surrendering all happiness and contentment in life in exchange for short-term pleasure and selfish hyper-gratification. Evolution has not prepared people for this at all. For many of us, nofap has become a matter of life and death. No human can live in a perpetual state of hypofrontal derangement, and that's exactly what porn ultimately does to it's victims.

Based on my experiences with this addiction, I firmly believe that resisting the lure of pornography and overstimulation, and escaping the brain altering consequences is going to become the next branch of natural selection in human evolution. The lure is just too strong and the availability is too great for many people to resist. The novelty requirement for sexual pleasure has been defeated by the internet so the only evolutionary off-switch we have has been taken away. The deprogramming of sexual imagery and the reversal of porn-induced hypofrontality is so difficult with such a long timeframe that a high percentage of people are never going to recover once they get ensnared. It's just a sad fact. They will carry their compulsions and fetishes to the grave. Many will be driven to suicide from anhedonia just as many probably already have. Millions of souls are going to become quietly sacrificed to the scourge of world-wide one-click pornography distribution.

When I was young I scoffed at the "Porn Kills" activists and thought they were just a bunch of uptight mothers and evangelicals. Now I know that they were more right than I ever could have imagined. Sorry if this turned into a rant. I know I make a lot of long posts.

 

Hey guys,

I'm just back with a little update and some thoughts. Over the last week most of the negative symptoms found their way back into my life and quite in midst of a mild PAWS-wave again. But I have this weird feeling that something is quite different this time. It's hard to grasp as I still experience a lot of fight or flight and thus many symptoms while life is doing its best to keep busy. But there is something good beside all the bad things. I'm still eager to work myself deeper into music production as it brings me a lot of fun which is something unusual for me. I recently started and to my surprise the beat I'm currently working on is becoming something I'm really proud of. It just sounds really great to me and the people around me. It's not like the people act to make me feel good, they all have the same genuine and honest reaction. It's just so strange to create something that other people seem to respect and honor. I never really had that before and while thinking about what to do next with the beat I kinda got very emotional. I don't know if its the happenings over the last days but I just started tearing up. This was not some form of deep sadness but more of "I feel fucking proud of myself" emotional occurence. I'm just really proud of myself for going through all that shit and still being able to see and do positive things in life. Years of derealisation, anxiety, tinnitus, sleep problems, depression, brain fog, forgetfullness didn't keep me away of fighting for a better life. I really went through some tragic shit this year beside having PAWS and I think we all do - everyone does. The one thing we PAWS-people often forget through all the suffering is the fact that we all are very very resilient people that try their best to break free from addiction while being in the middle of a pandemic, financial struggles, relationship problems, uncertain future concerning your job and existence, etc. We all deal with PAWS while dealing with life and that is something we should not forget. One day our brain will recover and the symptoms will leave and then you still have to deal with life but you went through hell and back and you managed to keep true to your principals more many years in order to gain your mental health back. Many people that live in todays society seem to be free of the chains of addiction but over the years I noticed that the majority of people is already addicted but is coasting between good and bad experiences. Many drink alcohol on a weekly basis and party, others chase sex, others chase money and wealth in an unhealthy manner, others are addicted to having might over other people, etc. There are so many people being addicted to external stimuli that give them a short-term gratification. Many of those people never leave the hunt and chase and never truly arrive as a clusterfuck of symptoms just hit a little small minority.

We shouldn't view PAWS as our own ultimate failure. We should be thankful for having those intense symptoms that remind us of the fact that there is something wrong and that our brain is not working properly. PAWS is our chance to break out from the never ending hunt & chase that plagues most of the humans. Nothing in the external world can ever feel the whole of addiction and pleasure. I know many things I wrote sound abstract and far off but we need to value the good sides of PAWS. In hindsight those 2-3 years of hell will give your life a whole new perspective and no matter how young or old you are - you earned a shit ton of experience and trust into yourself. If a man is able to take control over his sexual drive for such a long time then this man is also able to deal with other hardships life forces onto him.

I often felt miserable about myself and my self worth but since about 1-2 months I'm slowly gaining trust back into my actions and although I still feel kinda weird in many situations but I slowly start to gain back a small form of normality. It's just a tiny bit but being able to sit down for a few hours and just working on my beat without being controlled by the symptoms is a blessing. Do I feel very tired and brain fogged while doing it - yes, does the symptoms hinder me from receiving joy out of it - no. I'm finally able to feel some form of joy again. Additionally my sleep got better in relation to the last months. I'm sleeping 7-9 hours straight without waking up after 5-7 hours. I still dream a lot about weed, alcohol, sex, etc. but I somehow got used to those dreams which are one of the most obvious signs of my recovery.

Man my posts always escalate in size. I originally just wanted to say that we should be really proud of ourselves for getting along with all the bullshit life throws at us. Lastly I want to share a video with you guys that accompanied me since about 6 years. When ever I feel really bad or really far out. I just sit down put in some headphones and watch this video. It helps me to not dwell on the past and don't view to far in the future.
If you can't draw anything good out of it then I'm sorry for wasting your time but I think those 5 minutes are well invested time.

 

I really appreciated this man. I'm hovering over 13 months clean and I look forward, so much, to feel some true joy again.

 

It is very individual of how many days one needs till brain starts to reset. Some people it can be two weeks for some extreme cases it can be 18 months like you said.

 

Hi Allurixox. This is a Protracted Withdrawal Syndrome thread. No one here is experiencing a two week reset.

 

That's great DerJogge! What you're talking about is the Holy Grail of recovery. To get satisfaction from your efforts again. That's a very positive development. I'm wishing you more and more success moving forward!