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

1. Where is your "non-bro-science"-evidence that the initial PAWS process is over after 6 months? If it's just the observation from other peoples experience then this evidence is just as strong as an evidence as everyone else longterm reboot reports.
2. Why am I still experiencing drug dreams and random flash backs of sexual graphic images while dreaming 15 months after stopping my behaviour while not actively thinking about it in a woken state? If PAWS isn't real then why I am keep having those flashback dreams which often are accompanied by a lot of symptoms afterwards?
3. Why are you assuming everything in here just waits for the magical day? How are you able to know what everyone in here does for recovery?

You are throwing the whole noFap community into one giant bowl. I distanced myself a lot from the noFap-community on reddit as I think noFap is just the entry door we all go through. You act like this thread is the whole noFap-community. We all know that you can't just stop PMO and then lay around ally day waiting for recovery. I also don't feel like most of the people in this thread put PMO onto a pedestral. Most of us abstain from it and take the needed recovery measurements as we identified PMO as something that keeps us hooked in short term gratification. Most of us are beyond thirsting after superpowers, all we want to be is symptom free. Having a working and symptom free brain is enough superpower for me. You are assuming and assuming...

Any yes for many people PMO was this fucking mental beast that caused a lot of trouble for them. If you fap and watch porn several times a day for many many years then there is a certain chance that your mental health problems are caused or covered up by your pathological behavior. For me PMO/sexual arrousal is just one part of the equation. I was addicted to amphetamines, weed, alcohol, video games, cigarettes and many other things. My brain was just addicted in its whole totality. Before my brain became strongly addicted there was no mental disorder present.

Again, just because you felt like opiate withdrawal was 10x worse then PMO recovery doesn't mean that this is a universal truth for the whole cosmos. It's again very subjective. You often relate to bro-science being trash and that you have a lot of scientific knowledge but you make so many scientific errors that I would doubt that you have any scientific background beside reading scientific articles. No one from scientific background formulate so many wild assumptions on a topic this complex. Just in january there was a guy that stated out the exact opposite. He stated that opiate/benzo-withdrawal might be more intense and painful, PMO withdrawal is extremely lengthy and thus causes another form of suffering.

And to answer your question: no I don't believe that someone who has been on a 2-3 year streak and who still is in PAWS is just going to wake up one day feeling fine. I think if you exceed the 3 year mark and you didn't make any progress at all then you forget about something in your life and that you are still addicted to without being aware of it or being aware of it but ignoring it. If you really live in true abstinence for 2-3 years then I think you would be healed and from what I have read on this forum and on reddit this seems to be the case for 70-90% of the people. I often read about people that used coffee or cigarettes during certain times in their recovery or that they went to parties and got themself drunk on regular occasions. It it is highly promoted that you should cut out everything while you recover.

There is also a certain number of people who talk about 2-3 years of PAWS but many talk around the fact that they had certain relapses and binges which sometime went for longer times. And my personal opinion is that you have to be strict with your time frames and what to expect at a certain time. If you go onto a binge at the 12 month mark then you aren't back to square one but recovery is certainly delayed in my eyes. It also seems like you are backpaddling at this moment. We never talked about people that are 2-3 years into the healing process and still suffer prom PAWS. You made the claim that everything after 6 months is just the persons own responsibility and I'm highly disagreeing with that. And to my knowledge there aren't any people in here that went through a 2-3 year CLEAN recovery with no relapses and still are in the midst of experiencing a lot symptoms and no sight of recovery. If there are then I'm sorry and didn't know of this but most of the people that are stuck in PAWS for several years had relapses and thus delaying recovery at a certain point.

Considering the length of my posts: I'm writing this detailed because I don't like to be misunderstood.

 

Again dude, it would be much easier to respond to your points if you wrote less and focused on one subject at a time, I'm not going anywhere for a couple of days so there's time.

There are alot more of these 2 and 3 year guys than you seem to realise, I don't actually remember you to be honest? I left a year ago so I assume you came here during that period?

The 2 and 3 year guys are dissalusioned, they've done all they can and no they haven't relapsed or done anything to hinder the rebooting process I used to speak to them daily and I do still now speak to some of them occasionally, One of them that's now gone went through absolute hell, if he is to believed then he is the worst case on record, I believe his name was sane again or beanburrito ? I might be getting the name mixed up but anyway... He couldn't take it anymore, he got help for his mental heal, started taking an antidepressant and nearly every single symptom disappeared.

Another guy is Big lebowski, again this guy did not cheat, he did every fucking thing by the book, even quit smoking, quit alcohol and drinking coffee, he did over 2 years, again absolutely fuck all happened. I don't want to speak on his behalf so I suggest you talk to him about it. I believe he's still active on here.

There was another guy on here, I forget his name but he's at about the 3 and half year mark, again he was a fucking Saint with it if he is to believed, he is still not recovered to this day and has come to the conclusion he suffers with anxiety and OCD (if anyone remember this guys name feel free to tell me)

Then there was another guy, again he went fucking ages, at least 2 years I believe? Nothing really happens, he got a prescription for an antidepressant and shortly after resumed a healthy sex life with his girlfriend (this guy is known mostly on reddit but please link his story, I often see it linked here)

There's also a 10 year guy from yourbrainrebalanced that either posts here or has had his story linked here, again still not better. This is insanity.

I apologise for not being able to give the links and names to all stories but I've been gone a year, I've moved on from this shit.

Someone also linked me to a post here 6 months or so back I think where a long termer on here took part in a study on porn addiction, he had his brain scanned, the scientists found nothing wrong with his brain, no hypofrontality etc

I can keep going with stories like this, they are not uncommon anymore. Guys have been here years and they are not better.

And you seem to assume that most people on here start a reboot and then get on with there lives? I can promise you that is not the case for a staggering amount of people, they stick to there reboot like a Saint but they put there lives on hold, waiting for the day that the negative way they are feeling disappears, but that day never comes.

 

There are three simple questions right at the start of my text?! Why don't you just start with answering them? If I'm, in the midst of recovery and symptoms, been able to write this text then you as a recovered person should be cognitively able to understand everything I'm talking about. I'm just responding to all the matters and facts you threw into this thread.

I can gather even more longterm reports and post of people that recovered after two years and many of them said that all it took was time, they tried so many things and nothing did the thing beside time. What is this proving? I also already stated out that I'm not interested in other posts and experiences of longterm-rebooters as an evidence. Give me hard facts about the things you are talking about. If you evade my questions again then it seems to get clear that you are not able to deliver those hard facts and all you talk about is whysolong-science.

To keep this post extra short, I'm just gonna get into to the matter of big lebowski. It's been a long time since I read those posts back then as I wasn't partaking in this thread back then but for what I'm remembering, and please accept my apology in advance if I'm wrong, he fell back into a binge which even caused him to delete his account. He started quitting cigarettes and coffeine after already being into his streak for a certain amount of time. And I'm really sorry to say that and please forgive me for what I'm saying, this is not in relation to biglebowski: If you go a really really long time, like 1-2years and then suddenly you go on a binge, then there was very little done to before in order prevent this binge. A relapse doesn't occur over night and is just the product of a person not doing the work to beat an addiction. This is not something I want to blame anyone for as I relapsed a lot in the past but if you reach a certain time frame of being abstinent then you should have developed a certain set of skills in order to prevent a binge.

I'm gonna stop here so you can focus all your cognitive resources on answering my three questions.

 

I'm not evading your questions you angry twat, stop being so fucking rude to me. I'm trying to write a detailed response to each point so you are entirely clear on what I am saying so that you don't then ask me the same question but worded a different way while asking another 5 questions in a later post.

You have already made it very clear you are not fully listening to what I'm saying.

You are literally sitting there foaming at the mouth with rage writing me endless posts with a word salad of anger.

I am not your enemy, calm the fuck down and stop insulting me by implying I have cognitive issues.

 

You are coming to this thread talking all kind of stuff without any supporting evidence beside other people’s longtime reports that you judged as bad evidence just hours ago and then you wonder when people get angry. You insulted people in here by calling their PAWS being fake and delusional and now you’re insulting me like a Child. I know that you have no cognitive deficit. I just want you to answer my questions and I‘m still waiting for them to be answered. You were again evading my questions and at which exact point did we start talking about guys at 2-3 years mark not being healed yet. That was never the topic. So please go ahead and answer my three listed questions above.

 

People are not getting angry, you are the one getting angry.

I insulted you because you insulted me, I've tried to be as calm and rational with you as I possibly can considering how you are speaking to me. I'm not going to turn the other cheek when you are more or less implying I am brain damaged and trying to evade questions, you've literally just accused me of it again.

I never said anyone's PAWS is fake and a delusion, again this is why you are getting angry, this is the way you are interpreting what I am saying so it is driving you into a rage. I have confirmed to you multiple times I am not saying people are delusional or making it up, I have confirmed multiple times that what people are experiencing is very real.

I am not avoiding your questions, I can answer anything you like. I am not dodging.

For absolute clarity, even though they are listed above, respond with the three questions you want me to answer so that I don't have to deal with you accusing me of avoiding.

 

I am on a 112 day streak. I have had flatlines from days 36-43, 44-49, 52-55, and 59- now. I pmoed for less than 3 years so it would make sense that I would have these short flatlines, getting shorter in length. But then this really long one hit. I’m starting to think something went wrong in my brain on this flatline and instead of it being a few days like all the other ones it just took over. I am trying to get more sleep, meditate, and reduce physical stressors like intense cardio. What do you think I should do? Something seems wrong with me not being out yet.

 

„Personally I do not believe PAWS in the truest sense of the word can go on for more than 6 month, I believe that anything after 6 months is becauseyour nervous system is in a hyperaroused stressed out state and you are feeding yourself with negativitydaily so the brain just gets locked.“

This is what I’m relating to the whole time. I don’t know how to interpret this information beside PAWS not being real if it takes longer then 6 months.

Here are the questions:

1. Where is your "non-bro-science"-evidence that the initial PAWS process is over after 6 months? If it's just the observation from other peoples experience then this evidence is just as strong as an evidence as everyone else longterm reboot reports.
2. Why am I still experiencing drug dreams and random flash backs of sexual graphic images while dreaming 15 months after stopping my behaviour while not actively thinking about it in a woken state? If PAWS isn't real then why I am keep having those flashback dreams which often are accompanied by a lot of symptoms afterwards?
3. Why are you assuming everything in here just waits for the magical day? How are you able to know whateveryone in here does for recovery?

 

Yoo stop with your nonsenses man!

PAWS are fucking real.You can only exist but not living. It's like your brain fill with clouds and every parts are clearing bit by bit as times go on.

 

Last paragraph make sense

 

It's all depend how much damages you do to your brain from years of heavy PMO. Some people take 1 year, others 2 or 3 or more to get better.

 

@Don Quixote Thank you for your post! It's so perfectly adding up to my understanding and experience ! Stop old behavior, mature emotionally by getting used to stress and retrain your brain to a healthy pathways of effort and reward.

 

The reality is, I can give you studies that correlate with what I'm saying (6 months) and you can give me studies that correlate with what you are saying, it does not get us towards a conclusion other than having a debate over who's source is more valid, the main issue I take with these sources is we they are talking about drug addiction, not porn, there have been no studies following a group of "reebooters" over a 2 year period where brain scans are conducted every 2 weeks. You are basing your assumptions off a nofap doctrine that porn addiction is on the same level as drug addiction, I'm sorry but it just isn't, it's a behavioural disorder, it's a coping disorder, it's a remedy for boredom, loneliness etc

Do I think porn is addictive? Yes
Do I think withdrawal is involved? Yes
Do I think open can trigger mental health issues? Yes

You base all your opinions about porn addiction based off the knowledge of a few people such as Gary Wilson.

If you go back to the beginning of the NoFap when very literally information on reboots was given other than stop for 90 days and you will get rid of your ED, recovery was way more common, people didn't make a big song and dance about it, they got on with it, recovered and moved on with there lives. Now when somone reboots they are hit with a tidal wave of people with underlying mental health issues that have been here for years and spent an enormous amount of time on this forum reading and writing about how bad they and everyone else feels.

Back when I was in a reboot I used to message some of the people that recovered on reddit.

I asked one guy how we was doing now and if he has recovered, we went back and forth for a while and my last response from him was this :

"Hey dude, sorry you have had to suffer from this so long - it’s a terrible condition. I’ve been on sertraline for about a month, and have already noticed a lot of improvement. As far as sexual side effects go, it does make it take longer to ejaculate, but that’s about it (no erectile side effects). I’d highly recommend at least trying it for a few months - I believe it has helped me immensely. Good luck"

I then asked another guy similar questions, this was his response

"I was clinically diagnosed with depression. My doctor gave me escitalopram (its the scientific name, the market name for the medicine might be different for your country). After taking escitalopram my anxiety attacks and depression reduced and slowly I started to notice that my HF was improving. Before my penis used to be turtled up and used to grow slowly during erection. But that started to change. NoFap also helped me a lot. approximately 2 weeks of nofap almost made my HF symptoms go away (except I still would sometimes notice my muscles being unrelaxed). Feel free to ask questions"

Again, I asked another guy similar questions about his penis shrinking, porn issues and ED, I asked him what he did to get better

"Nothing, it just went away on its own. Mine was due to pelvic floor overactivity and severe anxiety"

Are you noticing a pattern here? Anxiety, the pelvic floor and porn use are in a feedback loop. Once these guys treated there anxiety everything worked itself out, the quitting porn was still important (obviously very necessary) but the main factor was a relationship between a tight pelvic floor caused by porn use and anxiety prolonging it.

People here are so wrapped up in this almost cult like belief that they must go on a 2 to 3 year pilgrimage in order to regain there mental health and sex life, no one ever steps back now and questions how fucking ridiculous this is because they have got so wrapped up in all this shit that they just believe it, even when they don't see the results, even when they can see people have been here for years now and are still not better.


About your drug dreams, I don't know much about your drug use so its very difficult to comment, what I can do is tell you about my experiences. Until you move on with your life and change things then you will have a permanent neurological impression on your brain, you might crave drugs and have drug dreams. That's the simplest explanation I can give you. You could literally go 5 years without drugs but if they are still an active part of your thought process then they will be there. Such as going on a forum every day and talking about a drug you have just quit.. Yeah that will do it.

3. "Why do I think everyone sits here waiting for the magical day "

Obviously I cannot say everyone does this, but I've been active in these forums since 2012, I think I've got the finger on the pulse by now and that is what the overwhelming majority of men do in my experience. I've got enough messages from them over the last year to further conclude that. Many of them feel so shit that they do not go outside, many do not work, many have lost contact with any form of social lives, they spend an enormous ammiount of time on the forums daily writing about how shit they feel and reading how shit everyone else feels. It's fucking toxic and it 100% guarantees that people will not get better. They are being given the wrong placebo and not trying to better there lives because they believe everything is shit due to there porn addiction so all they need to do is just tough it out for a couple of years and then they can continue there lives.
"

 

I have an anecdote which supports what you're saying. On my good days I get random squirts of dopamine where I really shouldn't, like my brain doesn't know where to deposit it. Most bizarre was that I got a huge dopamine surge from switching my phone's language to my native language. I mean WTF? It definitely needs to be retrained.

 

Are you guys the same fucking guy or what? Jesus Christ.

 

If memory serves, @Big Lebowski had fallen off the wagon at some point. I stand to be corrected if not.

 

I got cured in less than a year.

 

"there have been no studies following a group of "reebooters" over a 2 year period where brain scans are conducted every 2 weeks. You are basing your assumptions off a nofap doctrine that porn addiction is on the same level as drug addiction, I'm sorry but it just isn't, it's a behavioural disorder, it's a coping disorder, it's a remedy for boredom, loneliness etc"

Exactly there are no studies or any scientific evidence on anything like that and thus we can't make any final conclusions on this topic BUT you act like everything is set in stone and that your theory is completely true all just based of some longterm reboot reports from people that told you they finally found a solution and a way out of the misery. For me taking antidepressant isn't a way out of the misery, it's just covering up the symptoms and before you ask, I had tried the way of ADs in the past with additional therapy. You're backing up your theory with nothing solid, in the end it's also just "bro-science" and mouth-propaganda. For every person that told you it was a mental disorder there is a person that made its way out through they 2 year process of PAWS. As we said we can't make any final conclusions - so stop going around acting like you know it all.

In fact you constantly make assumptions as I said earlier. You don't differentiate between so many things. You're just putting so many things together which doesn't belong together and that is causing a lot of misinformation which then leads to people worrying about things that you shouldn't worry about.

I never read anything from Gary and most of my knowledge has very little to do with the whole noFap cult as you describe it. I'm far off that and you just speak to all of us as we represent the totality of members of the noFap forum since 2012. I'm just using this thread on the whole forum and beside that I haven't visited anything else on this page and just read an occasional noFap post on reddit to see the status quo of the community.

Concerning my drug dreams. I explicit mentioned that I don't have any thoughts about drugs in my woken state and beside that I'm not craving drugs at all. I moved my life and turned my life around in a way that resembles nothing like earlier in my life. I'm a completely different person and went through so much changes in my life the last few years. I barely have any contact with people from my drug days and drugs aren't part of my thought process in a way. I tell you what is happening: PAWS!

From time to time I visit the r/leaves sub on reddit which is a sub for people recovering from cannabis-addiction and PAWS is widely spread in this forum and what people describe their resembles a lot what people are experiencing in here. PAWS is real in any other substance addiction so there is no reason why it shouldn't also happen to people coming from a very intense and long PMO background that drains your whole body. For example the @Masked-Debater have very similar symptoms to the point where I often feel like I was typing his post and from my knowledge he never had any excessive drug background and just PMO.

To bring this whole discussion to and end as I already felt ridiculous last evening: there is to much we don't know for acting like we know it all! You and I might be wrong with so different things because there isn't any methological data gathering on this whole PAWS process. All I know is that in my situation there are more things like PMO going and my whole constitution resembles a lot with what people are experiencing in here. For me this discussion can end here. As I said I wanted to leave hints for other people. Everyone can decide on its own what to do with the information presented on the last pages. I can't stand people speaking in absolutes and acting like they know it all. We know nothing.

 

Right there have been no long term studies that back up either side of the argument but what we do have is now a very large amount of people that have been on nofap for years and they are still not better. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The idea that people just abstain for a certain period of years and then everything gradually gets better just isn't true anymore, I'm aware there are reports out there like that but they are few and far between and I've genuinely never spoken to anyone on NoFap's forum that has been on a streak for years and manages to get better. you can disagree with it all you want but it is reality.

Like big lebowski, he did 2 years fully clean, relapsed after 2 years and then you say "well that's why he didn't get better" how long would you of suggested he kept going for? Another year? Another 2 years? It's insanity, if he's not better after 2 years then something else is going on here.

The majority of the recovery reports that I've read take a similar approach to some of the things i have spoken about.

And again, I'm not acting like I have all the answers, I'm not speaking in absolutes, if you go back and read my posts you will often see that I try to prefix everything I say with "I believe" "in my experience" "in my opinion" because I try to be very very careful with my words. You lost your shit with me and went full on tunnel vision accusing me of saying people are "making it up" or "delusional" I said no such thing but this is how you interpreted it because I'm challenging your view on what nofap and rebooting is.

I agree that we aren't going to agree and that's alright. Next time just don't be so fucking rude please.

 

Sorry dude, I disagree on this. I've wanted nothing more than to NOT have to go 2+ years hardmode to get well. Just quitting porn isn't enough for me. That's not a moral judgement in any way; it's my body just giving up after decades of pushing it too far. There are levels of dysfunction. PAWS goes beyond "I can't get a boner for my girlfriend" etc etc, and down to another level of "I can't get out of bed if my life depended on it". FFS - I just lost my job because of the crushing exhaustion and brainfog brought on my kindling for over a decade. It's less of a pilgrimage and more of an necessity. There may be noobies who stumble on this thread, get confused and think that Nofap is all about PAWS - it's not - it's the extreme end of the spectrum in terms of health impact. 90 days hardmode may be a valid rule of thumb for someone with ED, but this is something more severe.

If I and others here as "so wrapped up" it is because the only other choice is a lot worse. You may be tempted to respond that this is due to my underlying mental health issues, and you'd be partially right - but trial and error over the last decade has taught me that when I have managed to hook up a decent hardmode streak my mental and physical health is transformed - my ability to process stress and anxiety has been on another level - but, as Don has alluded to above, the minute I've started to feel well again, I've lapsed and fallen down the rabbithole, so have never managed to really get across the finish line. Problem is, with age the length of time (ie abstinence) I have to go for to feel remotely well is up from about 10 days, to months or longer (I'll tell you when I get there).