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

Im so sorry you are going through this. PAWS is so hard on its own. I had a ton of family and marriage issues to work through especially in the first year of recovery. PAWS made them almost unbearable. I had such a hard time figuring out what the right thing to do was. Anxiety and panic would constantly wrack me, telling me I was doing it all wrong and was going to lose everything. I really hope you guys can work things out if that’s what you want.

 

I’m at the 20 month mark so I’m not sure if I qualify but I will give it a shot. I’m not fully recovered but I have far more good days than I used to. Some times I get it and some times I don’t. Usually when I’m in a big wave of symptoms I don’t get it. I had it all through out the reboot now that I think of it. It seemed to come back pretty quickly. I never had PIED though so I’m not sure if I count. One thing I will I’ll say is that when I was in the addiction especially the last few years I hardly ever got it and now I do.

 

I love this advice. It makes absolute sense, and I will try it!! Thanks !

 

Hey you’re welcome! If it works for you let me know.

 

Quick update from my side. Completed 23 months. Currently in an awful cycle while having so many things to do. Feels like I can’t face life at the moment but I still somehow manage to get along with everything. I have some hours where I feel really good and socialising with people also feels a bit more connecting but my sleep is still very weird. I still get addiction dreams especially in the context of weed and video games. Just last night I spend a big amount of time in my dreams to get my hands on some weed and good gaming set up. This somehow confirms the ongoing process. I just feel so burned out from everything and there is so much stuff ahead of me to do and I just want to be able to cognitively function in order to tackle is huge to-do-list. Recovery seems really far away but I feel like this is some trick of my leftover addictive mind trying to get me into consuming again by creating this feeling of hopelessness. Yet I can’t say that I make consistent progress concerning my symptoms - they just feel as bad as ever

 

Hang tight brother, you've made amazing progress so far. You quit so many things at once, that must of been really hard.

We all need to remember this, an athlete who tears an ACL, can be left with very many months to strengthen and repair themselves to fully function and recover. Rehabilitation via physio. We cannot expect our brain, to recover so quickly either. It will take time and it won't be pleasant.

 

Hey guys, quick update from my end as well: I just passed 10 months no PMO, though unfortunately I’ve looked at P a handful of times since then, most recently about a month ago. I’ve thankfully been able to stop myself from going all the way, but I’ve discovered that for me it actually seems harder to avoid going looking for P than to get myself out of it once I get there. It’s sort of a cause for discouragement and encouragement at the same time and of course I’m always trying to do better.

The bad news is that after doing reasonably well symptom-wise from around month 4 to around month 8, I’m now back in a serious recurrence of physical symptoms, which I suspect may have been set off by these repeated episodes of semi-edging to P within the last few months. This is additional motivation to take a truly zero tolerance approach to peeking, fantasizing, etc. going forward.

In any case, the thing that is most alarming me is that I seem to have lost a fairly large amount of weight in the span of three or so months. It may have actually been longer than that, but it’s only recently that I’ve noticed changes to my appearance, muscle and fat distribution, hair, nails, etc. This is pretty alarming and I’ve scheduled a doctors appointment to make sure nothing truly sinister is going on, though I’m fairly certain it’s just PAWS. I can absolutely see how years of bad sleep plus the relentless stress of this situation can combine to induce a catabolic state that can start seriously breaking down the body in scary ways. While I wait for my appointment I’ve been trying to dramatically up my protein intake and get more serious about my sleep hygiene.

Just a few notes about supplements: I tried CBD oil earlier this summer for a while and it didn’t seem to do much, other than making me feel even weirder and maybe even giving me a slight allergic reaction (mild cough, itching, etc.).

I also tried taking 250 mg Vitamin C daily for several weeks, and it initially seemed to really help with my mood. But I gave it up a week or two ago because I was starting to experience tingling/numbness and muscle cramps, which I had around the onset of my PAWS last year but which had gone away for a while. Hard to say whether this was the cause but I think it’s likely that supplements can have paradoxical and destabilizing effects when we’re this out of whack. Going to forgo taking stuff for a while unless I test low on something. (Though I bought some Ashwagandha at one point and am tempted to experiment with low doses of that to help with sleep/general fight or flight).

Keep trucking everybody. I know we have mild disagreements about religion here sometimes but your prayers or at least good vibes are definitely appreciated, and know that I’m always sending them your way too.

 

My update if anyone's interested -

About 10 months in now. Feel absolutely shit most of the time especially in the morning. By the time evening comes, I start feeling a bit normal. My digestion is badly messed up. I don't feel like I'm digesting anything I'm eating. It's all just going out and I'm struggling to gain back weight. I'm sometimes constipated and sometimes have diarrhoea. Can't handle any stress. If I stress myself even a bit, I have to go to the loo. Have a lot of back bone pain. Have real bad issue of semen leakage. If I'm triggered (I mean by any sexual content which I sometimes stumble upon in youtube videos) even a bit or get anxious, I experience leakage. From what I've read in Ayurveda, as long as the digestion is messed up, celibacy is impossible. So digestion has to be proper for celibacy. Not able to work at all now. Find it real tough to focus. It seems like I'm a step away from losing control of my mind. My dreams are super weird.

 

Dude be careful with weight loss. This was the last thing that made me got on nofap. Unfortunately though I was perhaps too late. I lost around 25 kg of weight last year without any effort. Given I had a lot of stress as well but I know it's primarily due to fapping so many years. Could be a symptom of PAWS too.

I struggle to gain back weight now. Fortunately for me, I was bit overweight so don't look too bad at 65 kg but I've known some people from a group who were between 60-70 kg mark and ended up in 40-50 kg mark. It's pretty wild. Plus as I mentioned before here, good digestion is the key to early recovery.

 

Hang in there dude. It sounds like you're in a similar place to me. It's pretty crappy, but the way I see it, at least we have a way out of our problems, rather than a mystery illness with no effective treatment that could go on for decades. Stick with the program, and you'll come out the other side.

330 days is pretty impressive, even if you don't feel great. I would be about that mark if I hadn't relapsed a couple of months back, so every day counts - and trust me, a relapse will f*ck you up.

I'm also struggling to keep on weight - it's weird to read 2 posts in succession where other people are in the same boat - but then again maybe this is one of the ways that PAWS can go. It feels like my whole body is breaking down, nothing works properly, but none of it is so bad that doctors can see anything obvious.

 

Checking in on my end,

290 free of porn, 1 MO relapse on day 72(no porn), now standing at 218 days free of MO.

I keep scratching the surface of getting out of the flatline/paws. Today, I feel as though I'm back in it. I hate the feeling in the morning, for at least about an hour. My heartbeat is quite a bit faster/my anxiety as well. It goes between 90-110, my normal resting heart rate is between 65-80. It seems to settle within 1-3 hours, at least there's that.

I will say that the degree of intensity from the symptoms has definitely lessened. We'll see how things progress in the next few weeks, I'm getting rather impatient on my end too..but I know I must be patient.

Have a good weekend friends.

 

Yeah man. I'm gonna hang on till the very end. And I hope everyone does that as well. Anyway, now this life has become a big good joke to me. I don't give a damn whats gonna happen. I'll just keep trying. Although I think my condition is getting worse. I have my face skin feeling like it's getting burnt. My eyes are burning as well and my vision is pretty bad already.

 

Bro, this is indeed very very important and something which we all have to absorb deeply. If you saw my last posts, I am fighting raging libido for last 02 months and when you get that back after 25 months, you tend to forget a lot of things. Thankfully, I didn't relapse but I did quite a few things which not only just broke my hardmode streak, it also brought back a host of new symptoms which I never experienced before. I went to dates thrice and had orgasms. More than that, what screwed me in my opinion is that I fantasized a lot during last 02 months. Further, I let my youtube usage out of control as well. More than the dating or orgasms, I feel the erotic visualization and bad youtube usage has flared up new symptoms for me which obviously I have addressed the past week. I am not wasting my 24 month struggle in vain but this is a shout out to all the long termers here that we absolutely have no leverage here. Not even a fucking inch. Further, and this is what I think and I could be totally wrong, the reason for new symptoms is that my brain chemistry has changed in past 24 months so my fuck ups would result in different symptoms. I genuinely feel that a relapse is far far worse than a routine PMO of a junkie. Its playing with fire. I am sure about this now because if my brain is reacting like this after youtube binging and erotic imagination, I wonder how crippled I would be after a PMO session to porn/p-sub. And a positive thing to add, I am already seeing improvement in symptoms after adopting total monk mode. Month#27 has been quite weird for me but lots of important lessons learned. A lot of knowledge and readiness is required to fight off urges after a long reboot. Please be prepared to fight the ultimate devil at the end of the tunnel.

If its of any hope to you, I was a walking dead 10 months into my reboot without any relapse. What you are going through is extremely normal. You need to go through this shit to repair your brain. Its inevitable so embrace it. Think of it in a manner that the worse you feel, the more healing your brain is undergoing. I don't know what else to say to you. You are going through hell, so keep walking.

I can totally relate to all of what you're saying. It gets worse before it gets better. My month 23 and 24 was utter shit. Especially I was pinning too many hopes on a miracle ending 24th month but it didn't happen. I got my libido back somewhere in month#25 despite being in PAWS which brought a whole host of other challenges for me. Just keep an eye on your overall lifestyle as well. Is there anything you could do to improve? I started taking daily cold showers and doing Intermittent fasting. I felt they were helpful but sometimes you are so caught in throngs of PAWS that you can't even get out of bed let alone do some exercise or whatever. It's quite tricky because its a long process because even if you somehow manage to get energy to adopt some good habit, the discouragement is followed very quickly because the effect of any good habit doesn't come in days or even weeks. But of you are on this path for these months without a relapse, improvement in symptoms is around the corner. Socializing feel connecting is a HUGE HUGE improvement if you ask me. I got that back around month#20 and at the end of month#27, I just want to be with my family and spend time with everyone. I was quite the opposite throughout my life and developed CRIPPLING social anxiety during my reboot. I still have it but its improving for sure.

Thanks brother

I had morning woods on and off throughout the 27 months period except the first 08 months where I carried dead meat. From month#8 to month#27, I have had days where I was out of flatline for a few days and morning wood returned. But to be honest, I never cared about morning wood because that was perhaps the last thing on my mind during bitter PAWS period. I don't think there is any connection between PAWS and morning wood. My libido is back now with full rage but my PAWS are still not fully healed.

 

Being able to hang with you guys on this thread makes me feel like a man.

 

Practice "Ashwini Mudra" aka Kegel Exercise.It'll help you multi dimensionally for muscles strengthening,stomach upset and all damn things to larger extent.

 

Hey did @Don Quixote delete all of his posts. I just noticed that at least for me they are all gone. When I click on his profile it says he has no messages. Is this just me or is it for everyone?

 

No, you are right. They are all deleted. I have no idea why he did that. Neither did he say or gave any hint that he might be doing that. I wish he didn't do that because profiles and messages of successful long term rebooters are very precious for new comers and we know that they are going to be quite a few. What can I say, he is the owner of his content though and has every right to do whatever he wants to do with it.

 

There are other long term rebooters who delete their posts after healing from PAWS or sexual exhaustion. Probably it's time to move on from everything.

 

Just to check in too, I have struggled this year to stay away from dating and sex, which is keeping me in PAWS. The biggest thing I've learnt is I have chronic frontal sinusitis, that is completely directly related to any sexual activity, it's super wierd, but I have swollen frontal sinus and if I even think about sex or engage in sex they throb and ache relentlessly

 

Thank you for constantly letting others know what you are going through. That is more than enough for us to be motivated to move forward with nofap. I, myself, has been struggling with PAWS lately. Not sure if this is due to the number of relapses in between streaks (started nofap two years ago). Not even sure if withdrawal symptoms would recur after each relapse, all I know is it will definitely slow down recovery. Lots of physical and emotional pain, including mental pain but the only way out is pure abstinence. I opted to be on hard mode as much as I can.