Hello

Hi hk, welcome. I wish I knew a method to help you stop. I do not. I do, however, know the method that helped me stop. This is it.

http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthread.php?2402-Get-educated-get-tools-and-learn-to-love-withdrawals

First page of the above link, first link, is the Gary Wilson TED talk. I saw it and I don't think I ever used porn again. It is the most important link you will open, if you are dedicated to quitting. Porn is the button we push to get dopamine. Until you are willing NOT to push it, you will never be free. Your choice.

Three things: get educated, get tools, and learn to love withdrawals.

Good luck on your journey.

 

What are your reasons for quitting fapping ? What benefits are you expecting with this change of habits ? Try to set clear goals. I personally want to quit fapping because i want to improve my relationship with women and my energy levels. I also read about fapping being linked to hairloss and want to find out if that's true. After that set a small goal. Maybe 7 or 8 days no fapping. Start small and then set grater goals.

 

@hk, the question about rewiring is an interesting question and I don't think there is a yes or no answer to it. You are new on this journey so a lot of terminology I use may be different from the terminology you use. You ask the question in terms of quitting masturbation but masturbation, for a porn addict, is just a symptom of the problem. Porn addicts use porn, PMO, and MO (while thinking about porn) to release dopamine. A lot of new guys do not understand that, for a porn addict, no MO is required to feed their addiction; they do not have see porn, they do not have to PMO, MO, or even O to stay addicted. Just thinking about porn releases dopamine, in a porn addict.

You need to understand the stimulus-response cycle going on in your brain. Again, this is for one addicted to porn. Not every guy who watches porn is addicted to it. For a guy addicted to porn experiencing porn (not just watching it, but imagining it, thinking of it) causes a Pavlovian response: dopamine is released. For a lot of addicts the biggest dopamine highs come from PMOing, but what a guy trying to quit must understand is that even without actually watching porn while you are MOing, if you are imagining it, your brain still responds with a dopamine release. Unless you are imagining yourself wrapping a Christmas present while MOing, you are probably thinking about, remembering, imagining, porn. This is where a lot of guys get confused and feel they cannot quit: They stop watching porn for prolonged periods, but inside their heads, they are still using it to release dopamine by imagining it. Complicated, yes, but we are a complicated species.

The addiction can be fed as easily as thinking about pornographic imagery, imagined sex. In the quitting stage (as opposed to the pre-addiction stage), things that would not have previously "triggered" me (caused a dopamine release) did. For instance, before addicted, I liked bikini pics, but they did not trigger me; in the quitting stage, I had to avoid them. In the quitting stage, after I deprived my brain's chemical reward center of the porn button I pushed to release dopamine, it began to trigger on thoughts and images our society does not deem "porn". Sexually suggestive, yes, but not porn. Beware of that trap.

So, when you ask if after quitting porn the brain rewires itself, it is a loaded and somewhat misguided question. The real question is whether after quitting using porn to release dopamine will the brain rewire itself?

Of course, the brain is not literally "wired" so it will not literally become "rewired." Porn addicts have unconsciously conditioned their brains to reward porn with a dopamine release. When they deprive the brain of dopamine it first responds with withdrawals--that is what you feel when you quit for a few days--a strong desire to use porn again. But, if you can get past that, get your dopamine levels back to pre-porn or "normal" levels, then you will lose most if not all of the desire to see porn.

If you get to this point the question becomes, what new pathways can you rewire your brain to reward? In its natural state the brain is wired to reward sexual thoughts, images, activity, etc. As in real sex with a real partner. I don't know you well enough if you have a real partner to help you rewire your reward center to reward being with a real person. However, the ultimate goal of anyone here quitting is not simply to quit porn, because quitting porn in and of itself, aside from being self control, is not especially rewarding. There are benefits to giving up the drug dopamine in the unnaturally high levels porn takes it to, but giving up that high is not in and of itself pleasurable. Ultimately, what we, here, quitting, want to achieve is rewiring our brains to want and reward the thing it originally evolved (or was designed) to reward, actual sex with a real partner, and not porn.

A lot of guys say that if you can stay porn free, PMO free, and MO free for 30 days, you can keep going forever. During that time, it is fine to have sexual thoughts, as long as they are not pornographic, as in having sex with your partner while focusing on your partner.

I hope this helps with your question.

Peace.