Fate Worse Than Death - a warning to recoverees

This post is 100% serious and grave despite the shameful content. And all details are based on my actual experience, edited to avoid self-dox.
This warning is about the danger of severe PMO addiction when attempting recovery. I hope it helps you avoid my outcome.

It is known that severe alcohol dependence can make cold-turkey withdrawal not just hellish but life-threatening. The same for benzos and opioids. Do you think withdrawal from severe PMO addiction is harmless? (Possibly because you still believe PMO addiction is "less serious than" other addictions, or "just mental"?) I will argue it is not.
Further: If you are addicted, you are not a trustworthy judge of how severe your addiction is. If you have a friend or loved one who is addicted, it is still difficult to know.
Therefore, everyone here has good reason to take this warning seriously.

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The TL;DR:
Don't EVER try sucking your own dick.

More generally:
Addiction implies a lack of self control. Withdrawal from PMO addiction at the beginning of Nofap will make you even more vulnerable to feelings and impulses you have not previously had to control and contend with. Especially impulses to simply find a way to feel good. Even if that way is physically self-endangering.

If you do not have an immediate mental flinch reaction against the idea of autofellatio - if ANY part of your mind has an inclination toward it, or can even neutrally consider it - then you are insufficiently armored against the danger.
One goal of this post is to install that specific flinch reaction, on the simple basis of self-endangerment. If you flinch instead out of disgust or shame, then your reaction stems from pride, and is not sufficient protection.
You have one spine, one neck, you overestimate how flexible and durable you are, and you should assume that any injuries there will stick around and make you regret them indefinitely. Don't pay that price.

In that light, am I saying Nofap is so dangerous you shouldn't do it? No.
Sobriety is 100% worth it, and Nofap is not itself to blame for my mistake.
Instead you must understand how dangerous the addiction itself is that you are fighting.
I hope that my example can bolster the defenses of everyone going through this.

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Nofap WILL initially intensify your sexual urges.
You are beginning to wage internal warfare against your addictive pattern, and it will become clever. Even as you succeed at withholding from your normal fap, rationalizing ideas can appear in your mind.
For instance, you may start telling yourself that even though you're trying to quit fap, you "deserve leeway" to satisfy those urges "just a little", and if not the normal way, "some other way". Alternately you may find yourself trying to rationalize that such a behavior is "totally unconnected to" PMO - after all, you're not necessarily trying to reach O, right?

Under NO circumstances should you ever resort to dangerous experimental sexual behavior, like autofellatio, asphyxiation, etc, to satisfy this urge. You must preemptively install defenses against this allure, and if you are the kind of person trying to Nofap, you are likely less mentally strong against it than you think. If you must relapse, relapse only to your normal fap, which is unlikely to be endangering.

You may think you have already hit rock bottom, you already hate yourself for your PMO addiction, it doesn't even make you feel good anymore and you just want to stop. This by itself offers zero defense against the rationalizations you will encounter from the blind spots of your mind. Really, zero.

The part of you that craves this has not yet left you, it is still monomaniacally desperate to repeatedly experience the moment of release, and WILL try any trick it can - blind to negative consequences, including endangering you physically - to get it. And remember, it's part of you - it can be as clever as you can be. This does not necessarily make it a hopeless fight, but it is far harder than you think.

Seriously every man trying to recover from this addiction needs to know that he is confronting what is probably his strongest demon, that truly might sell his life and health for a moment of pleasure. Something to that effect should come with every Nofap guide. Until you are totally recovered you need to keep your wits about you.

Besides mental defenses, I think the strongest defense you could have is having someone else you are accountable to for all of your sexual behavior during your recovery, who you can talk to about anything you are feeling and who can ask you at any time what you're feeling.
Flying solo through this is a critical mistake I think. You may actually want to consider weighing the costs and benefits of going forward right now with your recovery alone against the costs and benefits of seriously waiting until you have an available and committed recovery partner.

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My personal story is not special in any way. It is shameful and predictable and pitiful.

Three years ago I was an otherwise healthy early 20s male with a shitty job when I decided to do the dumbest and most costly thing I ever did in my life.
I was PMOing at least 2 times a day. By trying to stop and then being surprised at how difficult it was, I finally realized I was addicted. So I decided to try to quit: cold turkey, with no support, and without even telling anyone else what I was going through.
Just a few days in, during one persistent hard-on, the idea came from nowhere: what if? Calling itself harmless curiosity, this idea grew in intensity until every time I went to the bathroom I was thinking about it. And at one week in, I tried it. And then I really really tried it. And I hurt myself, badly.
My neck was in constant pain. I couldn't think. I spent a considerable amount on a hospital visit, to meekly tell a doctor with better things to do that I had hurt myself in such a stupid way. They sent me home with steroids and benzos and the biggest Advil you've ever seen, and I made a recovery.

But that pain still comes back to me every few months. I get reminded that I did something to myself that doesn't really go away. Some things are going to hurt more. I take more Advil and it's manageable. It's not good at all. I was just a bit annoyed at life before. Now I'm depressed, at myself, and still feel like I can't tell a soul. I quit that job for a different less shitty job, but it still kills me to deal with this. And even through all that I'm still struggling to quit PMO, as I last posted in my journal thread.

The Fate Worse Than Death is living knowing that you put yourself in a version of hell.

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Addiction is any behavior you keep engaging in, despite the negative consequences, because it gets you something you don't know how to get any other way.

Different people turn to PMO for different reasons, but I know I came to it for pain. Emotional pain, and sometimes physical pain. The thing I get is a moment of pain relief, and I use it because I don't feel like I know other ways to soothe myself that aren't drugs. It's funny that even being zero-tolerance on psychoactive drugs, I got myself addicted to my body's natural chemicals. It is a personal question to all like me, to ask what is the origin of that inability to handle emotional pains? I don't know.

Addiction means you are using X as a crutch to reliably get Y because you don't know any other healthy way like Z. And this means that if you stop using X, by default you stop getting Y, and this doesn't necessarily lead you to Z - healthy ways of meeting deep needs always need to be cultivated, but the need itself is direly felt. And so you are more likely to move toward something else just as immediate and unhealthy as X.

And that core wound, the thing that keeps you feeling you need X, has grown very used to sitting in the driver seat and getting what it wants. There is no particular difference in the deep mechanism between PMO addiction and other addictions, subtance or behavioral. An organism is desperate to meet a need and it finds a path. The specifics of what happens chemically may differ, but there is just one pattern, and it can be just as serious in terms of wrecking your life.

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That is the end of this post. I hope this information gets around.
I'm leaving this for myself:
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