First year nofap report

So this is my slightly proud first year nofap report.
(It's not a contiguous 365 day streak, but more like 320 days out of 365 PMO-free but I feel far better now and reached this 1 year milestone)

My reasons
Like in my intro thread, for years I didn't see this habbit as a problem.
Mostly, it were short PMO sessions 2-3 times per week. And soft pics, no video, etc. Especially because of that, I thought it isn't a big deal ...
But this PMO Stuff is really insidious. Every part of this P M O affects you in a different negative way. (I will write more details and my perception on that in a detail follow-up post ...)

I didn't believe that much in the superpowers. But I recognized several of the negative effects of PMO in my own life, especially lazyness & low motivation, fatigue, some social anxiety, increasing frequency and duration of the PMO sessions.
And especially some inexplicable headaches which were quite often, and I suspected them somehow to be linked to the PMO habbit.

Also I actually started several months before my "official" nofap start in Sep 2015 and just observed and logged my PMO habbits out of curiosity. I realized the habbit became a daily issue, and after becoming totally disgusted by it, I decided to try out nofap.


The journey
Because just reducing P didn't work the months before September, I decided to quit cold turkey.
The first months after that were a quite rough journey.
* Several evil headaches for hours, almost like migraine (that was actually the worst symptom for me)
* agitation & increased aggressiveness, frustration, irritability, annoyance, short-temperedness and other forms of anger, etc.
Basically the whole list in a random manifestation ...
* Testicle pain was sometimes quite annoying
* Moodswings were quite funny to observe

Its interesting how my personal challenge changed from streaks to just making every day PMO-free.
I don't know if this concept is too advanced for starters, I needed over 6 months to implement it. Unfortunately, my last streaks were quite miserable with about 10 days on average, mainly due to these new crazy, stupid urges ...

My stats
My best streak was 42 in the second month, and afterwards only 2 times 20-30 days.

I had about 45 resets in the first half, and 30 in the second half year, often several resets during a day. I logged it quite strictly, so the resets counted every case of PMO (to track bingeing/complete relapsing).
In general I was PMO-free on about 320 days out of 365. Compared to about 250 (short) PMO sessions per year before nofap.
So I'd say it's ok for the start, especially considering that I tought it's impossible to restrict this habbit.

Nofap effects
I saw the first positive effects directly in the first months. And some more long term improvements after about 6 months.
After one year, these strange headaches almost completely disappeared (and only return shortly after relapsing/bingeing sessions). That's definitely progress here.

Also I have far more self awareness, energy and free time !
Brain-fog is retracting, and I really appreciate that (but also I see now much clearer "the mess" this stupid PMO habbit caused).
I'm more confident, have better skin, akne gone (but may also be due to more physical activity/workouts, and improved eating habbits ).
I've got higher motivation to actually work out and more energy during training. If I continue the current workout regimen, I'll have six pack abs by next year, and nofap helped definitely here.

But really, I just don't know, how you deal with these crazy urges.
The urges got far more intense in the last weeks and that's my current problem.
In general as long I'm busy it's ok. But with increasing stress I tend to relapse ...
Thats were I need to work and improve in the next time. Any helpful suggestions besides meditation, and sport is greatly appreciated.

Conclusion
I am totally convinced that nofap can help making my life better and I will continue this journey until I destroy this PMO habbit (and then stay vigilant every day so nofap becomes even more than just a short term journey).
I'll do some in depth analysis of my journey, and will hopefully post it when I reach a contiguous 90 day streak.

Thanks
So thank you all for raising awareness of this topic and the motivation you provide here.
A giant thanks to the community, especially the people who welcomed me here like @FPDoc & @OutsideTime & everybody else I have in my follow and watched thread list for all the inspiring posts and support during hard times.
This would be impossible (at least for me and many others) without such an awesome community !

 

I'm glad you like my post.
I think the post not that super energetic compared to the ones with high streaks, but (long term) improvements can also happen with regular, shorter streaks. Just maybe not that fast ...


@ExuberantJellyfish
That is maybe still an advantage of (long) streaks, you have this nice big number, and you don't want it to reset to zero.
Especially the last times, it was only pleasurable because the urges disappeared (for about one day, and then the chaser kicked in, Yaaay ...)
I'm looking forward to the 100 days streak. This seems now more possible, that it was a year ago

Would you say, it really has become easier,
or like most of the things, did it stay basically the same difficulty, but you are just more used to withstand it ?

@feo1966
Yeah, that's true.
Phantasies start some days after not looking at P, and I usually dismiss these thoughts and focus on something else. Works most of the time ...

@Sleeping_Beauty
It's on the ToDo list
I wanted to read more about meditation, but hadn't the time for it ...
(Actually, I'm really angry, much time was wasted in school. Learning more about meditation and making it a daily habbit would be far more useful, than 95% of the stuff taught there.)


The "nature" of these urges/cravings is quite strange. It's the same, as in my post a month ago.

I can't really describe them. At least I broke the link to P.
Maybe it's just the "natural sex drive" (?), which was numbed all the years, and I'll have to get used to it. It's definitely not easy at the moment ...


@FPDoc
Actually, thanks to your motto "one PMO-free day at a time" I changed my focus more on that. It also motivated me just to get up and continue immediately instead of bingeing.

 

Hi @Amai,
I'm glad you like my post, and sure, as long it's non-profit charity and you put a backlink to this original thread here, I'm fine with that.

With the YBOP Article:
I didn't even notice, that they copied my post. (Nobody asked, but they put a backlink to this thread, so it's ok). And that's definitely not me on this photo.
I actually like to stay anonymous as long as I'm recovering.
I don't know who that guy is, and seems they put sometimes random pics, stock photos or screenshots from movies there ...

And btw, it's awesome that you do this and help others !