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

It's tough but have more hope brother.

Experiment1996 case is a difficult one. Because he has not relapsed but he is having constant wet dreams (1 per week), they add up and slow down the reboot, but it doesn't stop it.

Until now I haven't seen anyone that has a method to stop them, so they are outside of our control. Yet I am sure he will heal. If you check his posts, he is having reductions in symptoms and progress and eventuallly will succeed. Even if it took him more or less 5 years to make it happen.

 

Zero orgasm!

 

Hey @TheLastStreak

In my opinion I don't think this is exactly what is happening.

30 days is what is called your "window of tolerance". By window of tolerance I mean it takes your body 30 days before it reaches its limit and gives in to your PMO addiction. Based on what you have said, boredom is likely the surface level emotion that you use PMO to avoid. Years of PMO teaches the body and mind to numb out as a means of escaping uncomfortable emotions instead of processing them. How does the body numb out? By PMO, by social media, by alcohol, by drugs etc. The emotion can be anything from sadness, to loneliness, to anger, to stress or in your case: boredom.

So to summarise, the body craves dopamine as a means for you to PMO and ignore the negative feeling i.e. boredom. It is a program that we unknowingly teach the body through years of PMO. It is no different than your body automatically pulling your hand from a hot iron.

If you struggle to abstain past 30 days, I would say you still have yourself an addiction. Relapsing will always lower your internal resources, however it will also reveal the negative emotions that you have been using PMO to avoid.

I would love to create a platform for others recovering from PAWS, but I also would like to be in a position where I have at least made a full recovery. I think it is something that could be created/started by anyone recovering.

 

Yeah I am being way too lax, thanks I need to delete social media as part of my recovery strategy

 

@mentorr @Ezpz did you guys delete your social media?

 

Hey @Illbeok

You seem to be in a bit of a loop, or cycle. You stop P/MO long enough to have sex with your partner and then eventually return to it.

cycle 1

cycle 2

cycle 3

cycle 4

cycle 5

Reading your story you don't sound like that bad of a case. It sounds like maybe you get a little complacent and return to PMO/sex. If I was in your situation I would simply do a full reboot without any form of orgasm. Nothing but respect for being open with your partner and telling her what is happening because I think that will always take courage. But the reality is, if you just abstain 100%, from PM or any orgasms for as long as it takes, you can healed for good. You don't sound like you have a severe case of PAWS based on what I read.

A final point:

7-10 days refractory period is terrible. Once totally cured your refractory period should be 30 minutes or mere minutes if you are healthy/lucky. I think this would be a sure sign that I still need time to recover.

 

Thanks @mentorr i appreciate the feed back. Luckily my partner is very understanding. I feel very fortunate she is allowing me to take my time.

what scares me is my level of anxiety and brain fog. It was never like this on my other relapses.
From 4/15 to 5/2 it completely disappeared and I felt like I was recovering or even recovered. Now these last 3 days it’s returned with a vengeance. This is what’s leading me to believe I may have done more damage than previously. I really appreciate you taking the time out to write back and you have already made me feel much better. Do you think I’m creating this anxiety?

 

Yes IBS is one of the most common symptoms of paws. It has to do with the dopamine receptor in your gut. If you research about IBS in general, you'll see one of the major reason for that can be mental health issues. It's just another symptom of low dopamine that you experience while in paws.

During my one year streak, i had severe IBS from 5-11th month then it started to ease of and the functioning started becoming normal. I'd say give it 6 months and it should be better along with other paws symptoms.

 

A partner that understands what you are going through and allows you to take your time is a good partner for sure.

I would start by saying, no damage has been done. While brainfog and anxiety are both unpleasant symptoms, I would say try not to let them sway you into thinking that you are broken when you are simply going through a period of recovery.

I have my own theory on what I think could be happening with the anxiety and brain fog being more severe but I couldn't say for sure and would not want to advise you wrong. In my own recovery, I spent months upon months waiting for my anxiety to vanish as part of recovery process. The reality was that my anxiety was there for a specific reason, it had simply been masked by all my addictions and habits. As a result it was something I had to spend time with to resolve. Do not get me wrong, I still experience anxiety, but it is not gnawing at me daily like before.

So my question would be what is the anxiety actually like? Is it a social anxiety where you only notice it socially, with other people? Or is it a constant gnawing anxiety? The anxiety that you feel throughout the day without understanding why. I know on the surface this feels like throwaway details, but it can honestly help you understand which direction your recovery is heading in.

Either way I hope that helps in some way.

 

Yesterday I was in a really bad mood because I just didn't have the energy to go somewhere where I liked to go with my family and friends. My mind automatically wanted it's fix. It wanted to get it's medicine. Browing Reddit, I saw a post relating to porn and I almost relapsed. It was a sort of peeking. Today I feel the difference in mood and cognition. Stimulation for even few seconds affects me.

 

"There is no cure for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but treatments can help relieve symptoms"
Your doctor doesn't seem helpful

 

@mentorr

It’s anxiety that pretty much starts 5 minutes after I wake up and realize I don’t have morning wood. It sets in on my back and chest like a plate of armor and from there starts to impact my focus and concentration. It stays with me throughout the day. It also impacts my appetite and I find it hard to eat. Before I relapsed and edged, I definitely had anxiety but it was nothing like this. I have a fairly stressful job which I used to handle with ease, but in bad anxiety days it definitely amplifies.

funny part is, that a lot of time at night, it significantly lessens. I feel a small amount of life in my penis when it does. Just seems to all be connected. Last night I woke up in the middle of the night with an erection. It lasted about 20 seconds. I went back to sleep and when I woke up in the morning I had little life down there.
Again, about 84 days of not seeing P. About 40 days since my last O through sex. Figured I’d have some MW and no anxiety by now.

 

The anxiety sounds like the gnawing, ongoing type that I also experienced. I cannot be certain but it does sound and seem like maybe there is something to be resolved (internally) by you.

There was a rebooter some time ago that suffered with the same type of anxiety as you. When he looked into it, he realised that the anxiety had nothing to do with his reboot. He had been in a long term relationship and gradually realised that he had fallen out of love with his partner. The anxiety was around having to tell her and break up the family. PMO was his way of numbing himself to that problem.

I am not saying that the anxiety is 100% around an internal issue of your making, but a) it would make logical sense and b) you have nothing to lose by internally investigating. If the anxiety IS because of an unaddressed internal issue, as time passes the anxiety is likely to grow that little bit stronger. The anxiety would simply be a message from your body to say "Illbeok, we have a problem".

 

There are many conditions that do not have a cure but may require a medical treatment, such as diabetes, cancer, HIV/AIDS, herpes, IBS, etc. I simply suggested that if you have an incurable but treatable condition, such as IBS, you may benefit from addressing it with a professional, such as a medical doctor, a nutritionist, a dietician, an Ayurvedic doctor, etc.

Your current strategy of doing nothing doesn't seem to be helping you very much with your chronic IBS. Again, I understand that you don't mean to be combatative. A person in PAWS with chronic IBS can be rather irritable.

I hope you find the strength to fight for your life. Nobody else is going to save you but you.

 

@mentorr thanks again I appreciate the feed back. I’m really not sure if I have anything underlying. Since April of last year I really felt great until this most recent relapse. I’m really beating myself up over this, especially because it not only impacted me, it impacted my partner.

I remember on 4/15 having a deep conversation with her about all this. She cried and begged me to stop reading forums online. After that conversation, it was like a weight lifted. I stopped reading any forums and truly felt on the road to recovery. Had such a great 2 weeks where I felt normal. I don’t know what happened last week, but out of nowhere the symptoms returned. I feel like they are not as strong as they were before, but they’re there. They lasted about 20 days last time. Just hoping this is typical in a standard flatline phase, and that I shouldn’t expect to be experiencing these symptoms long term. Going to stay hard mode for at least the next few weeks and see how I feel.

 

Just a quick note - be very careful with anti-biotics.

Before I realised my many health problems were caused by PMO I thought I had a prostate problem, and used anti-biotics to try and treat it. Turns out my prostate was OK - the problems I was dealing with were due to tight muscles in the perinium, which was easily dealt with with stretching exercises. However, the anti-biotics ruined my gut, and I'm still dealing with the consequences to this day.

It is so easy to mis-interpret what we're dealing with and make things worse. Sometimes doing nothing is the least worst option.

 

• • Guys, I have a hypothesis that it's possible that porn addiction leads to structural changes in the brain that lead to less gray matter, less connectivity to the reward system, and therefore an inability to experience pleasure, leading to depression
  • • I feel like I have flatline symptoms and I have depression symptoms. How do I tell the difference? Does nofap really work? Also I feel a lot of anxiety in this forum, what should I do

 

I think that this is a fairly well established idea already?

 

• Can we really recover from this

 

Keep recovering, trust me it does get better after a while, even though it may seem like there's no end to this.

Stick to no PMO and no p subs, avoid YouTube and social media, if you're really determined I'd say even delete Instagram and disable YouTube, I've done that and it's been a year. This can get really addictive and doesn't give rest to the dopamine receptors, which is exactly what they need. Focus on good and enough sleep.