please help

Hi ace31,

You have been confused like me in recent years. The studies showing masturbation is healthy are true but the caveat is that its only healthy if you do it in a healthy way. People who are addicted to pornography use and feel frequent and strong urges to masturbate have tipped the loss-benefits scale the other way. Think about how you feel after you masturbate: do you feel good and like the orgasm was enjoyable, do you feel depressed and shameful, do you feel like you need to masturbate all over again, do you feel something else? Healthy masturbation is healthy, unhealthy masturbation is not. Think of it like diabetes: sugar is a normal thing for your body to ingest but, when you overconsume your body cannot handle it. The intake of sugar needs to be closely monitored and other steps like exercise and a healthy diet then need to be undertaken for recovery. The same is here: abstain from porn and masturbating because, if you do feel the frequent and strong urges to masturbate, then you have altered the way your brain produces and accepts dopamine.

Explore the community more and participate, ask all the questions you want.

Cheers,

Ryan

 

Hello Ace,

Spiderman is right, it might be healthy, but we've abused the system thanks to porn.

There are even websites, and this one psychologist in particular, who claim that porn is not a addictive and is actually healthy for you- actively trying to combat Gary Wilson's work and the Yourbrainonporn website.

I wouldn't listen to that crap. Listen to yourself. How do you feel after a week, two weeks. There are withdrawals- and those suck, but when it feels good, how good is it? Better than before? You know intuitively if it works.

 

The longest I've gone is 100 days. I'm not entirely sure why it is good- staying away from it seems to help you focus a lot more on other parts of life.