POLL - Which of these hurts the reboot process more? M without P OR P without M

I believe watching P without M ruins ur brain and M without P or fantasy ruins rest of your body more , and it depends on your past to determine which one is worse for you.

 

i think watching p is more harmful. also it hurts ur eyes

 

yea if you do every single day, it depends how often once a month or 2 wont do crap

 

How can M without porn possibly be worse than Porn without M?!?!?!

Masturbation is a normal and healthy thing in most adults, it's only when we coupled it with porn that it became a problem (compulsive masturbation etc)

Watching porn gives you an unnatural dopamine spike, masturbation on its own doesn't. Let's not forget, while hard mode is undoubtably the best and quickest way to reboot, many people reboot successfully without cutting masturabtion out at all, just abstaining from watching porn

After around 60 days hard mode I reintroduced occasional MO (about once a week ish) and Iv had no negative side effects or chaser effect from this.

Porn is the problem, masturbation is not

 

Thats is what im trying to say!! dude finally someone understands i reboot 113 days already and relapsed 2 times and i dont feel any different. no porn

 

P in my opinion will only set you up for M later - and likely PMO. I strongly believe P is not in any way conducive to healthy sexuality, while M can be. And as was previously posted, it's what causes the hormonal spikes and "Coolidge Effect" and all that scientific jazz.

However, I compulsively MOd for years without P when I was younger and it was definitely not healthy either. I'm convinced that contributed to the ED more.

 

I think the answer to the question (as exemplified by the responses) is different for each person.

For me, porn and masturbation became interdependent. I became addicted to masturbation before porn, but when porn entered the picture, I added it to my masturbation habit. As a result, I usually watched porn before I masturbated (but not always).

 

The idea that masturbation is a "healthy" part of adulthood is a rather recent one (by that I mean becoming popular in the last 20 years or so). Dont forget that in older generations you were more commonly made fun of masturbating than you are now days. It hasnt always been as socially acceptable as it is now. Now keep in mind that Im not saying its unhealthy, but rather that you will be fine if you dont masturbate. Its not like your balls are going to shrivel up and your penis will fall off if you dont give it attention. Anyone who thinks you HAVE to masturbate for some added health benefits or whatever is just being silly or naive.

 

I wish I could say that you could just "turn it off", but I don't believe you can. Masturbation and porn are habits and are literally ingrained in our neurons like other habits. Habits involve a jumbled mess of neurons, hormones, memories, triggers, etc. You have to unwind all of that in order to create a new response. That's why it's so hard for people to give up unhealthy foods, smoking, etc. There isn't an "ideal way" because all of us are different. We have to make our own way.

 

From what I'm starting to piece together as far as PIED is concerned, PMO is the worst thing you can do, just watching P is the second worst, followed by MO, followed by just M.

I imagine that if you can get erect without P and without just physically stimulating yourself and then you MO, it isn't too harmful since you are not reinforcing the unhealthy neural pathways to get aroused that involve P (as long as you aren't fantasizing about P). On the other hand, it may slow your reboot as you are not getting aroused the normal way via actual human intimacy.

 

I think it is highly dependent on the person. I have heard of people who can fap once or twice a day and be fine, but if I did that my drive and general motivation to do anything would just be completely gone. I also remembering reading some study that says fapping once every 7 days is best for optimal testosterone levels lol. To answer your golden question though, if beating a porn addiction is your goal then obviously completely abstaining from all forms of P, M, or O will be your fastest way to recovery. For someone who doesnt have a porn addiction, I think it would be up to that individual to see for himself what amount and frequency of masturbation he feels best with.

 

For me M has been the major problem. I dont mind the P and im not hooked that much into it. Once i start the M i cant seem to stop so itsbeen really bad for the reboot. But i advise that one should just stay away from both

 

@pale_blue_dot : P is more harmful in mental while M is more harmful in physical.
compulsive m obviously suck our energy so quickly. compulsive p sucks a lot of our valuable time of recovering. i think p is worse, but this isn't an excuse that i'm free to m. m for now is bad for me, lust for now is bad for me.

"ideal" way to deal with this shit? from my experiences, i believe that ideal way is not an intellectual logical or rational way, not a way that we can find on youtube or read on books. it's a feeling of enlightenment which we might never find it. human will continue to suffer before the power of nature