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

Yep, I have digestive issues. I'm hoping that they will improve over time as long as I abstain from PMO. This alone would make the effort worth while.

 

Welcome brother!

I was in denial for a long time. For years I didn't make the connection at all, and just thought I had all sorts of mystery illnesses. Then I made the connection, but underestimated just how bad things actually were - for about a decade. Then I found Nofap, and thought that the "you've got to quit NOW" guys were extremists, and "surely I could compromise - like once a month or something?" I've found out the hard way that that doesn't work. I'm 48 and my life is truly in the tank!

From what you describe of your life, and comparing it to my experience, if you carry on PMO'ing then things will get even worse while you're using, and consequently the withdrawals will be worse too, as and when you eventually quit. This is a long term thing and requires consistency and persistence.

I think that all the other stuff in life - anxiety, "why am I here", "what's my purpose" etc, will all become a lot clearer once you're free - you kind of become a different person, so you're perspective will change, hopefully for the better. Every day without P/M/O is a good day, and you'll be a little closer to finding out who you really are. Or at least closer to having a better quality of life!

 

Yes, I had all of them. Getting better tho as I approach my 17th month of abstention. First one to disappear was random diarrhea. Still having occasional heartburn and abdominal tightness.

 

Thanks!

I'm a couple weeks into my journey and I have a strong resolve to keep going; I don't foresee relapse in my future but I'm sure that's how many addicts feel. I don't want to let my pride come before the fall but I'm tired of feeling tired all the time; tired of feeling like shit. I've felt so bad on some days that I could get suicidal ideations out of my head. I'm ready for a change.

It is still very frustrating not "knowing" that this is what's causing my symptoms. I even hesitate to call myself a "porn addict" - what authority do I have to make that judgement? What if I'm wrong and my symptoms are completely unrelated to porn? Am I still a porn addict? I'm just frustrated at how this whole thing feels so ambiguous and arbitrary.

I would say I don't think I've been in denial, simply because I've never been educated otherwise. I started using porn sometime probably in my mid-to-late teens and I'm in my early thirties now and have been using fairly consistently over the years. I've always preferred a certain very vanilla genre (by most standards) and the only way I've escalated is perhaps by sheer variety of women (and perhaps number of women). I don't feel that I've escalated much in terms of deviancy so part of my questions just "how bad" could I have really made things for myself with my usage habits, but from what I understand it isn't necessary a question of deviancy. I could be watching the most "wholesome" porn possible but if I do that frequently enough it could still desensitize my dopamine receptors and reprogram my sexuality (away from sex with a real woman).

Only recently did I become aware of just how bad porn could affect people, and to be honest it's still very confusing because there seems to be so many conflicting opinions out there, even amongst medical professionals. But I can't ignore the hundreds upon thousands of personal anecdotes from guys; there are too many to brush aside.

 

You don't have PAWS yet because you just go on nofap for 2 weeks. If you keep relapsing you will make the process longer. You may experience the ACUTE phase before PAWS. And the latter could last up to 24 months if you were an extreme case.

You have to keep in mind that PMO is something you have to eradicate completely. There are no short cuts when you reach rock bottom.

 

At what point do you consider acute withdrawals to be post-acute?

My own experience was horrible withdrawals(deep depression, extreme anxiety, irritability, nausea, insomnia etc) from around day 10 to day 30. After that it cleared up, I wouldn't say I felt good but similar to how I was pre-nofap. I relapsed around day 60ish though so I don't know whether another wave of withdrawals would have hit or not. Once withdrawals started for you did they just never go?

 

I pray that what you said is true but I feel like it isn’t.

I’m 22 and have had PAWS symptoms since 17 or 18. Anhedonia, social anxiety, depression, digestion issues as mentioned above, etc. Basically all the typical PAWS symptoms.

The thing is I’ve never been on a streak longer than 3 weeks.

If what you’re saying is correct, maybe I’ll heal in the typical 90 day time frame or 180 days or something since these symptoms aren’t technically “post” quitting or at least not long enough into a streak.

Regardless though I feel like my brain is so damaged from the hours of edging that I’ve been through that it will take a long time to heal, I just hope it isn’t 2 years. I guess the only way to find out is to break my pathetic 3 week record.

This is unrelated but I have noticed when I go on a 2 week streak or so, I notice windows of a couple hours where my symptoms lessen. Less social anxiety, life seems a bit brighter, etc. I don’t feel cured like how I felt a few years ago, but the symptoms are a lot less. However, in the evening or just a few hours later I go back to feeling like complete shit. It’s very weird. Maybe it’s a part of PAWS?

 

What you're describing just sounds like porn addiction due to dopamine desensitization and other changes to the brain. You won't know if it's PAWS or not until some time has passed.

 

How long would you say has to pass before you could say it’s PAWS? Also would that mean the recovery time could be shorter than the typical 2 years that is mentioned a lot here? My symptoms are really similar to a lot of the people here which is why I thought I had been living with PAWS for the past couple years.

 

It's about how much time passes after you start abstaining from PMO. If you're still using PMO you can't really be surprised if you're still feeling like shit. You said that your longest streak is 3 weeks. A typical reboot period is 90 days (about 12 weeks). Once you actually make more of a concerted effort to quit, if you're not feeling better within maybe 3-4 months then I think at that point it might be considered PAWS but don't quote me on that.

You should really read Your Brain on Porn if you haven't already.

 

Hi, these are questions many of us have struggled with at some point, so here's a quick summary of how I see things:

I would say that the best definition of addiction is doing something that is harmful to yourself (causing physical or emotional distress), but you aren't able to stop, despite wanting to (read Dr Gabor Mate, especially his book on addiction: In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts).

Bear in mind that this is such a new phenomena that a lot of "experts" are completely clueless. I've been to more than one therapist who acknowledged sex addiction, but couldn't accept porn addiction. Most therapists are baby-boomers who grew up with Playboy. They think they know what they're talking about, but they don't, for 2 reasons as I see it:

1) Technology has taken something (porn) that was potentially fairly addicting pre-internet and turbo-charged it to the point where it's irresistible to many. This is such a quickly developing thing, that tends to affect younger people, that older people who are "experts" are too remote to experience it themselves (for the most part). Porn use is so embarrassing, that many suffer in silence and it just doesn't get talked about, so it doesn't register as loudly in the collective consciousness. And most "experts" stick with what they know: "I looked at girly magazines as a young man, and it didn't do me any harm. Pictures are just pictures, right?". Their "wisdom" tends to influence what other people believe, but it doesn't mean they're right.

2) Cognitive addictions have only recently been more accepted in main-stream thinking. Gambling addiction is starting to gain acceptance as a "cognitive addiction", but porn less so - see above - it's an embarrassing / taboo thing to talk about. If people can get addicted to gambling, or Candy Crush, then why not porn, given the primal urges that it taps in to?

Science is always playing catchup with people's "lived experience". As long as the pro-porn lobby don't do a total hatchet job on the science, then I think the science will be there in another decade to show beyond doubt that porn addiction is real, and serious.

On another more optomistic note @lukeman3000 , you may not be looking at 2 years to get well. Up until a couple of years ago, a couple of weeks hardmode was enough for me to see pretty big improvements, and I'm sure that if I'd managed to quit permanently before then that I would have been well in the space of a month or two. However, I have since passed a threshold of some kind that means I am now in a much worse place, and with 9 weeks of hardmode currently, I can barely leave the house. Just starting to see improvements over where I was a month ago, but it's very slow. I'm in no position to say how well you may be or how badly addicted, but from what I've read from you, I get the impression you're not one of the most extreme cases, so there's hope yet!

 

You know how addiction tests ask if you continue to engage in the behavior despite negative effects? Well does it even really count if you aren't consciously aware of the connection between the negative effects and the behavior?

I feel like this is me and porn. For many, many years (in fact until just two weeks ago) I was completely and utterly oblivious to the damaging effects of porn. As soon as I read Your Brain on Porn and other material (just a couple weeks ago) I immediately began this journey. I faltered 2-3 times in the first 3-4 days but have been going strong for 11 days now.

If I'm able to maintain this kind of progress, what does that mean? If I'm able to quit essentially cold turkey, does it mean that perhaps I wasn't ever addicted? Or not necessarily?

 

Hello, I'm new to this thread but relieved I've finally found some educated people who can give me sound advise for what I'm experiencing. I will try and keep this as short as possible as to not waste your time. I have all the symptoms of PAWS (Anhedonia, no emotions, depression, anxiety, no libido, fatigue, cognitive issues) but would really appreciate some confirmation from experienced sufferers if I actually have it. I'm going to list all the relevant facts related to this issue in a bullet point format and would like you to read through and chip in with your opinion on the matter.

-I was never depressed or feeling like this before my first nofap streak, I just had some social anxiety and brain fog issues I wanted to sort out
-My first nofap streak was over 2 years ago and lasted around 40/50 days in which I felt great but I found myself in a sexual flatline
-Because of this I got scared my dick wasn't going to work again so started fapping and having sex with my ex again just because I thought it was healthy and would get my libido back
-This was the start of me not feeling like myself anymore and the negative PAWS symptoms I described above started to gradually increase. My libido never came back despite my efforts
-I tried everything in these 2 years to make myself feel normal again (quitting alcohol, quitting smoking, exercise, meditation and every self help tool under the sun) but nothing seemed to work and there was always a correlation between orgasm and how I felt which I tried my best to ignore for so long
-For the last 60 days I have been doing monk mode and the symptoms initially got unbearably worse after about 3 weeks and I'm now just starting to have moments of relief where I feel kind of alright but still nothing like myself before nofap
-The short moments of relief will come randomly and go randomly with no obvious trigger
-Currently split between thinking I have PAWS and will recover or that I've got some sort of permanent brain damage (It's during periods of bad symptoms that I think the latter). Either way im a zombie without any sort of spark at the moment and not feeling 'alive'
-Did PMO for about 6 years from 12-18 daily

Do you think I could have put myself in a vicious cycle of PAWS by forcing myself to orgasm after my original flatline?
Do you think that it is definitely PAWS and that I will recover with time?
Do you think its something else and I should be medicated (really don't want this to be the case)? - I've had all the blood work done for why I might feel this way due to health reasons and was all clear in that department

Please ask for more detail if it's needed because it's important I get a well informed answer now. Not felt like myself for over 2 years now and starting to get worried if I ever will again, it's not even about getting my libido back and superpowers like everyone on nofap goes on about - I just want to feel normal.

Thank you

 

I wrote this one time before but I think this citation needs to be quoted again: "PAWS makes you think that you suffer from a mental illness" or in other cases like you caused permanent brain damage. When you feel bad your mind tries to find an explanation on why you feel bad. Problem is that there is very little certainty about the correlation between PAWS and porn scientific wise. If you abused benzos or optiates for many years and then you go withdrawal and you experience symptoms 1 year after quitting then there are like 200 articles on the internet that talk about benzo/opiate-PAWS. I didn't find a single article about porn, it's even difficult to find articles on weed-PAWS. There isn't a clear statement or guideline where any of us can use. We got reboot reports from people going through the same shit we did and we have a few people that report a cure from PAWS after two years but most of the people that recover after two years don't come back and rarely share their experiences for various reasons. So in the end we have to put our trust into all sharing very similiar symptoms and matching timelines. This is in fact very little to put our trust into but in the end most of us went through years of trying everything else. We got health checkups, different lifestyle changes and so on and we all came to the conclusion that nothing really did the trick. For me there is no other way then going through those 2-3 years of PAWS and find it out myself, I tried everything else.

Nobody is able to tell you 100 percent that you have PAWS and that you will recover if you are abstinent for two years. But just by the description of your post I'm 80-90% sure that you suffer from PAWS. You have symptoms coming and going with moment of them easing up a little without any obvious trigger (this is what interested me the most), you started using PMO pretty early and through all your puberty and last but not least there is some form of kindling. I personally think that kindling or in other worlds, repeated phases of consume after being abstinent for a while. I guess more withdrawal periods make you more prone to PAWS. It's kind of paradox but sometimes a phase of abstinence which causes your brain to heal, followed by phase of milder consumption, causes more serious symptoms that feel a lot more unbearable then if you would have just consumed the whole time. This is often observed in alcoholics but I think this counts for other addictions as well. In all those years of consuming I always felt some form of symptoms but they never were that apparent. I stopped everything in 2018 and went for about 6 months without any amphetamines, weed, alcohol etc. I was still having orgasms by sex at this time on a side note. I started drinking and smoking weed just a tiny bit and I got symptoms way stronger than any time before. I could just explain this that my brain healed itself to a very little extent and then I crashed it again and the contrast of those different states or the increased intensity of the effect of the drugs where too much for a brain still in recovery. When you consumed for years your brain got somehow accustomed to the situation but the moment you start recovery it gets sensitive again, different "neurotransmitter overload protective mechanisms" shut down in order to help recovery and let receptors build back up. If you flood your brain with anything at this point again then the effects might hit much harder as on an already numb and damaged brain. It's like having a very bad functioning leg that has some form of abnormality for example weak/soft knee-joints. Your body finds a way to compensate those bad knee-joints by stiffening up and strengthening the muscles around the area, acquiring a different walk pattern where you rely more on your other leg etc. One day you decide to undertake an operation to correct those disfunctional joints. You lie down in bed after surgery for several weeks recovering. At some point you are allowed to leave hospital but you're told to not put weight onto this knee at any cost, but you can't wait to walk again and put weight onto your leg again. This time there are no stiffened and strengthed muscles as you lied down for weeks causing the muscles to get weaker, you forget about that different walk pattern and boom your knee joint cracks like never before because there aren't any defensive mechanisms around this time. I hope I get across the point of this analogy. Every time we leave addiction for a few weeks our brain puts resources in recovery but looses some resilience against the drug. You then use it again and your brain is not prepared for this as you were in the midst of recovery. Do this several times and your brain has no clue of what the fuck is actually going on. This is why going back into relapsing after a streak might feel worse then before and causing more symptoms. At this point I have to say again that all this is speculation and just observation from my own experiences. But I have quit so many times and every relapse process caused more intense symptoms then the withdrawal before.

There was a 30 page book about a guy having PAWS from smoking weed on daily basis for just a few months (if I remember correctly). He smoked just like 2-4 months daily and got the full broadside of 2 years PAWS. So the real effects behind PAWS are still a big riddle for me and I don't think that we will ever truly now as our brain is too complex.

Nobody can give you a 100% guarantee that you have PAWS, you have to put that trust into your own intuition and the over 88 pages of this forum where so many people report the same problems after doing the same dumb activity. We are in some form pioneers and pioneers just have to trust themselves. We all just make things up and in the end we suffer from an unnamed permanent brain damage that comes and goes by miracle, or we all suffer from an untreated mental illness that resolves itself for many people after two years OR we all just have PAWS, thus share similar symptoms, similar timeline and hopefully one day we have accumulated enough trustful success-stories that we can indeed confirm that PAWS is real and leaves after about two years of recovery. I hope this reality becomes true one day and until then we just have to be pioneers putting trust in the process. I am 99% sure that I suffer from PAWS, I still get dreams of smoking weed and hash, I sleep very very bad again, I feel like shit the last days after having the best two weeks in this whole recovery process and I feel better then month before for the last 14 months. I still got a lot of derealisation and this sometimes worries me as very few other people share this symptom but it's not the feeling of the symptom itself but rather just the worry that I'm the special snowflake that has a serious gut inflammation or anything like that which is responsible for all this, but as the time passes by this thought looses more and more power over me. I guess it's just a more pronounced symptom of weed-PAWS as weed was my main drug. Many of you feel just like a mix of brain fog, concentration problems and tiredness which might result in very similar feeling but you identify it in a different manner.

I am out of thoughts at this point as writing this text was very exhausting for me today but had not any interest in doing anything else so. Sorry if my articulation and grammar isn't that good at the moment but my brain is mixing up many things and english is not my mother tongue.

PS: LOL I accidentally pressed a button on my mouse which caused the page to go backwards, making my 30 minute write-up disappear completely, I just sat down a minute in a sheer totality of regret and numbness, facepalming myself. I then picked myself up and discovered that a simple forward click on my mouse brings up the last page of this forum again with my text stored in the comment section at the bottom of the page. I can't put the change of mood in words that I just went through. It felt like some days where I felt super depressed in a rainy, grey moment only to have sun shining into my room the moment later and me feeling optimistic and good again.

 

I can't express how thankful I am in words for your response. I've come across a lot of your posts on different forums whilst trying to educated myself on this subject which I also found very helpful so I'm glad such a well informed individual was able to give me such a detailed response. Hats off to you sir.

I found your idea that the brain is overly susceptible to damage when it is in recovery interesting, believable and frightening as it makes me worry that I've caused permanent damage to my brain through my years of denying my brain recovery when it obviously needed it. It is also touched upon in YBOP as intermittent abuse producing more profound effects on the brain than regular use in addictions.

On good days I fantasise that after a period of time I'll return to the person I was before and regain that 'sharpness' which has been so elusive for me in recent times. On bad days like now I can't help but identify with the belief i'll never get my academic and emotional intelligence back even with all the time in the world. Hypothetically speaking if this was 100% PAWS would these things come back to me? I've tried looking into this myself but my research came up short unfortunately.

"We all just make things up and in the end we suffer from an unnamed permanent brain damage that comes and goes by miracle, or we all suffer from an untreated mental illness that resolves itself for many people after two years OR we all just have PAWS, thus share similar symptoms, similar timeline and hopefully one day we have accumulated enough trustful success-stories that we can indeed confirm that PAWS is real and leaves after about two years of recovery." You make a very valid point here. It's blatantly obvious that PAWS is the cause for so many of these cases. We're lucky that we have each other to learn from, instead the vast majority would have no option but to presume the worst about out mental state.

Once again huge thank you for producing a much needed informative response even when you didn't feel too great.

I really hope that you find relief and recover completely soon, have you seen progress in your 15 months journey in terms of the symptoms lessening?

 

I swear to god, if after 90 days or two years my symptoms resolve and I feel like "myself" again, I'm going to write my own fucking book on this shit. I cannot express how mind-blown I am as it relates to porn essentially ruining my life, or at least the possibility thereof. Unbelievable that such a thing could cause a person to become virtually incapable of experiencing pleasure, and even drive a person to thoughts of ending their own life.

 

Yh same here. I'm currently studying neuroscience at university and intend to research PAWS once I graduate. Of course I need to recover in order to think clearly and logically, I'm just about getting by at the moment and worried I won't even get to graduation

 

I'm 13 months in and am still in so much pain, all the damn time. Can't really sleep either. God damn.

 

Anybody else sometimes get their posts held up for moderator approval?