Unusual Case

Fapstronauts from all walks of life, Salutations!

This semester marked the onset of one of the worst experiences of my life. But more importantly the chance for a new beginning.

This was my first semester at a new University and almost everyday throughout the second half of my semester I dealt with sudden bouts of Anxiety and Panic. These attacks were acute and completely overwhelming. It felt as if I were losing control of my mind and emotions, and was left trapped in this negative spiral in my own head of which I had no control over.

I started forgetting about assignments, having incredible difficulty concentrating, losing interest doing the things I love, was unable to form new relationships, and worst of all I felt like I was just stuck. Trapped. Just inexplicably losing my mind.

What's weirder, and I promise I do not mean to come off sounding conceited, was that in many ways I had my life together! I had a steady job, just transferred into a good 4 year university from community college, and had recently gotten in the best shape of my life.
Yet these mental illnesses which are stereotypically and unfairly associated with the "loner", persisted in me.

One week It got so bad that I ended up in the emergency room because I had no idea what was happening and didn't know where else to go. They promptly prescribed me anti-anxiety pills and sent me on my way.

This TERRIFIED me. I could never have imagined myself deriving sanity from a pill bottle and did not want this to become the norm for my life.

Determined to find out what had opened this pandora's box of dread in my brain, I began researching.

I cut out all caffeine which ended up helping only to a minor extent..

Then I began meditating. This helped regulate my mood greatly but the attacks persisted anyways.

This brought me to a point of near acceptance. A point in which I started to believe there was nothing I myself could do outside of conventional medicine and pills to stop these attacks. It seemed as though it were time to swallow the fact that they were now a part of my daily life.

I was two days away from meeting with a psychiatrist when this thought slapped me in the face. "What if it's porn?". From there it took me approximately no time find spades of articles and videos describing the negative effects of porn on dopamine levels in the brain.

The more I read. The more I realized that the true cause of my misery had been hiding in plain sight. Abusing porn and masturbation for 6 years in absence of real sexual relationships had been slowly grasping my mind until it had finally reached a strangle hold. It made so much sense. The evidence, the different testimonies, the facts. I've been addicted and didn't even know it.

I immediately canceled the appointment and decided to see what happened when I cut out all porn and masturbation, or as us Faptsronauts so aptly coined the term PMO out all together.

Within 4 days. yes. I repeat. Within 4 DAYS I felt more like myself than I had since the start of the semester! It was unreal. The attacks basically disappeared with only minor anxiety tremors popping up here and there accompanied only by slight feelings of sadness which flatlined throughout the span of those 2 weeks

Keep in mind that this was all before I had ever become involved with NoFap and had the slightest clue what PMO or Rebooting meant.

Eventually I PMOed again and with that relapse came back a bulk of my anxiety. This time however, I was determined as hell NOT to dive back into the same self destructive habits that unwittingly tanked me and countless others in the first place. I am here not just to partake on 90 days without, but a help set up a lifetime of with. To heal, reset, reboot.

Porn is hiding under a thin, black veil of normalcy in our society. We should all feel proud that we can see straight through that veil into the addictive detriment that porn truly is!
It's now day 6 of 90, life is looking up, and I'm happy to be a fapstronaut.