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

Last one was a year+ but then relapsed twice and currently 83 I think. I try to avoid edging/fanatasasing but I fail with it especially at weekends and I notice worse stress when I edge.

So is this stress thing temporary? Do you have a material that elaborates more about it ?

 

A lot of us on here agree that edging is the worst thing you can do to your brain. I am certain edging has been the cause of all these symptoms for me personally.

If it is stress from paws or nofap then yes it is temporary as long as you dont relapse. One of the symptoms of paws is the inability to tolerate stress and regulate emotions. You can check out more information either on this thread (there is a tone of helpful stuff on here if you have the time) or you can check out PAWS from other addictions such as drug and alcohol via youtube or google.

 

Thanks man!
Yes it definitely caused by PMO and edging.

I am trying to follow stress reducing techniques, I wish there is a way to cope with this at least to do my responsibilities ...

There is no other reason for my health to deteriorate like this. I will check the posts out in the article!

Have a good day

 

Edging the worst. You have to go from when you last edged. Even if you are on day 83, edging in my book is a reset.

 

Who are the most recent long termers who made full recoveries.

Im still not healed, coming upto 4 years. In the beginning I had several longer streaks, but never fully healed back to normality

Im going to define two classes of healed:

1) I am celibate, and don't engage in any sexuality, but I feel fully normal and have no negative symptoms
2) I engage fully with sexuality, I feel fully normal and have no negative repurcussions of engaging in sexuality

 

hi everyone, kinda new to this forum (posted once 1.5 years ago). I have been doing PMO for a good 35 years. It became just a part of my life. Didn't keep me from getting married and living life. Still, i was doing it every day, sometimes 2 or 3 times. 8 years ago, I had some kind of burn-out. I also masturbated 3 or 4 times in one day. Then i totally crashed. Since then, I exist between a hyper state with tons of reflux and motivation with energy and a crash state in which i am super weak, tired, dizzy, pins and needles, brain fog, headache, and back of the neck pain. And when i was in a crash, i would do PMO to bring me out of it. I have been alternating between these 2 states for 8 years now. I do not know 'normal' anymore. I Went to a million doctors, ended up 6 years ago with the diagnosis of Fibromyalgia. I continued with PMO but less, probably 2-3 times per week. I have suspected before that PMO was part of the problem, but never gave it enough importance. This month, i started thinking that perhaps it was indeed PMO all along, and it was never Fibro. That, for the past 8 years, I have been in a constant state of PAWS, with each PMO every 3 days being a relapse. So i have been caught in such a cycle for 8 years without realising it. Does this make sense to some of you? Could it be indeed the case? I am now at 9 days and i am feeling terrible, like i could stay in bed all day because if i move, i am dizzy and can not stand on my legs. I would love to just know so that i can begin my journey with hope.

 

Holy shit you must be one of the worst cases I've read about.

No wonder you have such terrible withdrawals.

If you want to recover you should be doing no porn, masturbation or ejaculation at all. Total celibacy and abstinence.

And even if you do it it will still probably take years of feeling like shit until you get better.

 

That's basically what happened to me. I stayed crashed though, I never had the hyper state that you spoke about.

This will sound a bit crazy but you've probably avoided the worst of it by still doing it 2-3 times a week, it wasn't until I really cut down that I began to feel the full effects. Right now you're pretty much still just "rolling with the punches" so to speak, I felt way better then than I did when I started putting decent streaks together.

 

thanks guys. So i guess my story is believable. I never fully suspected PMO until now, because I was doing 'better' by doing it only 2-3 per week. It did not cross my mind that i was relapsing each time. fuck.

 

Well if you're anything like me, you'll feel a fuck ton worse if you start relapsing every 2-3 weeks or every 2-3 months, doing that really flipped my brain upside down. I don't think 2-3 days is enough to incur any kind of change on the brain, you'll just stay in that low-level state and it will become your "normal".

 

The worst part is your streak gets longer over time but you dont actually get reward for effort. You actually get punished.

 

I had a similar scenario in September 2020 when I started getting really hard symptoms after relapsing as Yumek described. They increased after every binge after a nofap streak. Until November I was totally different person filled with crazy symptoms.

It took me about 8 months till I got well but then things were unstable due to slips to fantasizing and edging but they were manageable. After two years of long streaks (100+ each) and the last was 380+ I was feeling almost as totally normal doing all the harmful lifestyle habits random people do like eating a lot of sweets and such and all was good. I thought I can manage using social media again especially Instagram without edging, but that was the mistake that made me slip and suffer again.

@yumek I believe your issues started from PMO, when you stop pmo do you best not to masturbate and avoid edging, if you masturbated make sure you don't binge(I think it makes things worse). Also follow a healthy diet, I recommend watching materials to specialists like Dr. Eric Berg (check him on youtube).

And I highly recommend reading Rebooting as the best remedy, it mentions a lot about such symptoms you mentioned. It will help you how and why you need to reboot.

And I strongly recommend socialising (in reality not virtually) no matter how anxious you feel, persist there and it will support your recovery quickly. (Exporsure therapy)

There is one formula for this addiction: Stay away from pmo and super normal stimulants + cultivate your health physiologically, psychologically, mentally, spiritually, and socially. That is the only way to improve yourself.

After couple of months you shall feel better.

-----------------------

 

I notice my issue is related to stress as Ezpz said. Especially I have brain fog and tension headache gets much worse when using digital screen for about two hours. (I need to use it as an IT student). Staying away from computer makes me much fresh and better. Currently I am working on paying extra efforts about having better sleep, taking nutritions and stay hydrated. While using the computer in best healthy instructions possible.

And of course no edging or fantasizing as much as possible.

Have a good day everyone.

 

I totally feel what your going thru cause I’m in that state as of now where I’m dizzy and can’t stand for too long even bein outside with the dizziness is terrifying so end up in bed all day encountering same symptoms brain fog, back neck pain, shoulders definitely pins and needles too guessing I fell bac into this state cause I been stimulating myself with sexting other female’s seeing naked girls on social media and sexual activities been in nofap for bout ten months but lately been giving in now I’m trying to get back strong and go hard mode for sometime

 

this is insane. 8 years of wondering why i am 'crashing' all the time, thinking I have Fibro and still fapping to make the crashes go away and thus continuing to build my own prison.
@Mr.Chips thank you. And yes, I am doing all this already. Well, not socializing much at the moment because I can barely walk. But I have a pretty normal and stable life. I managed to keep it by fapping. It was like my coffee/drug to give me energy and drive...let's see if I can make it now without my drug.

 

Very similar story to mine. All I can say is that if you want to get well you have to quit all forms of sexual stimulation, with the possible exception of moderate levels of sex with another person (in time). But if you're where I think you are (using myself as a yardstick) then you could be looking at years for a "full" recovery. You should see improvements much sooner than that, but I'd hunker down for the long haul.

 

@Dave G 123 thank you. I am going to do just that. It will be difficult with my partner of 10 years as sex, including wild sex, has always been an integral part of our relationship. I was kind of keeping up with her by edging constantly...

 

Hey fellas it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I just hit 3 years of no porn or masturbation. I have to say that my situation is much improved. I am not 100% but I have way more good days then bad days. The bad days are very minimal compared to how things were during the majority of this nightmare. I guess you could say that the stretches of good days are getting longer and longer and the bad ones shorter and shorter. My bad days now consist mostly of anxiety and depression. I’m at a point now where I can use reframing and cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, prayer, and meditation to work my way out of it. I very rarely experience brain fog dizziness headaches or ectopic heartbeats and chest pain. One thing that has gone away mostly is the constant rumination on this whole situation. I have days where I don’t even think about it at all which is an incredible blessing.
Now on the topic of sex. I had sex throughout this thing. I never suffered from PIED but I did have pretty severe symptom spikes post orgasm. They would come for me about 3 days after sex and usually lasted several days. Over the past year the amount of sex I have has reduced drastically. My wife is going through what I think is her own protracted withdrawal from the SSRIs she started taking after I disclosed to her that I’d been lying to her for our entire marriage. I’m probably at about once a month right now where before she got off the antidepressants I was at around once a week. I’m not sure if it’s a huge factor but ever since we started the reduction I can definitely say my symptoms have drastically decreased. Now when I have sex the refractory period is much less severe. The crazy part is how good I am with not having sex all the time. I feel like I’m in a position where I am gaining complete control of a part of me that once ruled my like. I have a very strong sex drive and have the ability to get incredibly horny but I also have the ability to shut it down incredibly quickly. I was not expecting this.
As far as what worked for me. Well the main thing is time. It sucks and is horrible, but with time I went from thinking I had destroyed myself permanently, now I know I will recover and be better than I ever was.

I also know that talking about God is incredibly unpopular on here. I’ve been excoriated several times for bringing it up on here but I’m at a point where I don’t really care anymore. My experience is my experience and you can’t argue with it. I would not have been able to get this far without prayer and meditation. They were by far the only things that could get me out of the deepest depths of despair I was in. My relationship with God is by far the best thing that has come out of this thing and has actually made the entire journey worth it. Take that and do with it whatever you want all I can say is that it works for me and I am at a point where I am becoming increasingly happy without the need to constantly spike my dopamine to be that way.
Lastly I will say that PAWS is an excellent way to work on your internal shit. For me it basically took everything I was masking with porn and shoved it right up in front of my face. For me it was coming to terms with my father’s suicide when I was nine. Also dealing with the regret I had from never achieving the career goals I had when I was a young adult because I wasted so much time on porn and video games and being a stay at home father. Children are an incredible gift just as long as you view them as such and not time wasters that keep you from achieving the ego inflating career you’ve decided to stake your self worth upon.
I know you don’t realize it right now because you are in the depths of hell, but you will get out of this if you don’t relapse. I am getting there and the glimpses of the man I can be on the other side of this thing makes me view this entire horrible experience as a gift. A horrible gift that I never want to go through again but a gift nonetheless. It sure as hell beats addiction to pornography and the dissatisfaction that type of life brings. Hope some of my journey helps. I love you all for going through this with me, and for your desire to no longer be slaves to your sexual impulses. Anyone who even attempts to go through this is a warrior in my opinion. God Bless!

Oh one thing that helps is a YouTube channel. I don’t agree with everything this guy talks about but he seems to have a great deal of knowledge on what we are all going through.

 

@Monkeyboyab2c thanks for sharing. After how long did you re-introduce O? Or did you never stop?

 

I never stopped. I have however had probably 3 periods of approximately 90 day periods of hardmode throughout.