Is using NoFap forums for too long unhealthy?

If anything, compare it to what you were doing before. Comparatively, it would be a good habit. Reddit and YouTube, the examples you used, are more so for entertainment purposes, whereas NoFap is an educational and growth platform dedicated to helping people become better through the use of forums. I personally don't think you can be "addicted" to something that serves as an outlet for many.

 

It doesn't have to be anything negative, look at some people's relationship with food. Aside from that it also becomes too subtle when it's not one particular thing, like someone can spend a lot of time surfing but not anything in particular, or actually get to know anyone.

 

Can you get addicted to this website? Sure, I would say I am kind of addicted to it myself. I spend about an hour here every morning after waking up, and check it for a minute or two once in a while all through the day too. And sometimes I open multiple tabs on my browser and leave nofap on one of them open, just for it to be in the background. Honestly I think it helps for me to stay on track. Can this addiction be negative? I don't think so. There is no issue being addicted to a positive thing like this, it's like being addicted to healthy eating or exercise—it's good thing to be addicted to. Of course I use the word "addiction" casually here; if you get addicted to it so much that it negatively effects your life then obviously it's bad (but nobody's addicted to NoFap to such extent, and I am sure it's not what you mean lol). I don't think you can compare it to Youtube or Reddit, cos these are more of a mindless, time wasting, escapism websites; NoFap is a personal health and self improvement website, which is very different. I mean you don't go to this website to zone out on shorts or endless scrolling of a feed, like you do on Youtube and Reddit, rather you go here to engage with recovery, personal development and be supported by community—not comparable.

 

I find myself looking more and more on NoFap and want to cut back myself. The site may become addictive if you start to worry to much about your profile and your persona around here. I'd say any online profile that keeps track of some sort of progress may become addictive.

For me I want to cut back because I feel like the site doesn't give me much new. Old stuff is getting repeated (which is fine, since new people come here) and I rarely read anything that is interesting or new to me. Yet I have to say that it helped me a lot to achieve my 100 days. I feel like I'm part of a community and we do it together. It reminded me daily about my goals.

 

In my opinion, yes especially if you get involved in silly fights or stay on it longer than you planned to. They say this site isn't social media but it's awfully similar. I try to not use it so much but this week was a bad week and I felt I needed to use it a bit more than usual.

 

That sums it up. Quitting porn is relatively basic. Everyone has their own goals and their own little spin on what they need to get it done, but once you figure yourself out it's just a question of application. The new guys do need to hear it, but if you're around here long enough there does get to be a lot of repetition, and then you get a little bored and goofy and you do get into arguments, worry about your persona like Pauley also said, worry about likes, etm. Then again, I have cut back and without that constant reminder about the goal and how high a priority it is, you can start to think it's not that important and you can slip.

I'm still here because of the semi-public journal. Knowing someone else can read my stuff does cramp a little bit in what I feel comfortable saying, but it keeps my blustering self-pity in check. I do need to keep journaling, turns out P was just one problem and I need to keep working.

I do "spot check" the forums and comment when impulse dictates. I don't have the time and energy to answer the same questions over and over again, but I also want to give back to the community that helped me so much. I do tend to stay away from certain sections, though, there's not anything for me in some places. Like, "Rebooting in a Relationship" mostly pisses me off, the "Loneliness" bit is depressing and redundant, and "Problematic Sexual Behavior" can get mildly triggering. It's not usually anything anyone says, it's what I start thinking about as a consequence. I think I've found a decent balance with this forum, at least, as balanced as it's possible for me to have.

You can't find your balance unless you play with it a bit. I think cutting back is wise, if you feel like you've been spending too much time here.

 

Two factors to consider are the definition of insanity of repeating the same thing and expecting different results, which may include surfing the forum but never switching up your strategy, and the second thing is people do tend to numb their feelings online. In that case it probably isn't the thing you're repeating that is the issue, more so your reason for using it. Even though the explicit reason is recovery here the subconscious reason for a given person may be kind of holding that at a distance, especially if it is more appealing because it's kind of like "recovery light" with promise of easy method and a huge list of "benefits" as is often portrayed by some.

 

I believe that participation in forums is generally considered a healthy and positive activity, overuse and addiction can affect one's daily life, productivity and well-being. It is important to maintain a balance and awareness of the amount of time and energy spent on the forums by changing it to watching interesting movies and shows on soap 2 day for distractions, but again, within limits)

 

I think 60-90 mins daily is quite a bit. You are devoting a big chunk of your day on the forums, what are you doing on the website? Are you just mindlessly browsing/scrolling or are you actively reading/studying success stories and tips etc to better yourself?

I somewhat agree with others saying its healthier than other choices, but make sure spending that time on the forums is not for the purposes of distractions from real life or negative feelings. The reason I say this, that's the same type of behaviour that keeps us addicted to PMO/internet in general.

 

Know your limits. Some posts trigger me so I stop reading, used to I would keep doing it and I would end up falling. It’s ok to remain here if you have purpose and stay away from triggering topics.

 

I think it's important to be aware that we're really addicted to a behavior, and not the site as such. Yes some platforms have more things like algorithms and notifications to push you to be 'engaged' but there are two parts to the process. In casual conversation we just say we're addicted to X but there's both our part and the thing we're addicted to.

If we accept workaholism is a thing, then this really highlights how thinking of addicted to some object doesn't always make sense. You can overwork with any kind of work, including addiction recovery. I've heard people doing a lot of service in 12 Step recovery say at a certain point their sponsor tells them to not take on so much.

I think that's one of the ways the forum can be addictive. It's not what we normally think of as work, but when people are making posts to help people, or even replying a lot without qualifying for whether that's the best way to help or if they're the best person to address a particular post, then even when they mean well and have good intentions it is likely to be compulsive.

In that way workaholism and social engagement kind of meet in an online platform like this. The thing is in the bigger picture it kind of takes away from the quality of the content. Because the simple fact of the matter is we don't do our best writing all the time, and we're going to be better at writing about certain things over others. Even here where we're sharing from our experience there's a difference between our own journal and trying to help everyone who asks and every topic that comes up every time. But if we treat it a bit more like actually publishing a piece of writing and not always a casual conversational thing that will also help things stand out more when we do write more carefully.

 

I know you have your answer @Returning Rebooter but I wanted to chime in because there are so many interesting questions wrapped up in this. You ask

This could be taken two ways, so I'll edit your question a bit:

It can be, but if you are using the forums to fight off a particularly deep period of temptation then no, being here for ages is way way better than edging to porn for ages.

There are two ways of looking at addiction, is it something we can cure ourselves of, or are we addicts forever. Some people use their addiction as an excuse to forgive their relapses ("it was inevitable, I am an addict"), while others (myself included) use their addiction to remind themselves to stay vigilant. I hope I will keep visiting this site forever, it is a cornerstone of my porn-sobriety.

That depends on your definition of addiction. Mine is

These forums are not harming me, nor really damaging my life. Not like porn did. And I can stop. There may be a slight tug, but nothing like the one we all suffer from our porn addiction. So "no", I do not think it is possible to be addicted to this site itself.

I do not, but there are some aspects of the time I spend here that concern me:

• Any time I spend buried in my phone or laptop is time when I am not really present with my wife. That's a problem, especially now that I am working longer hours.
• Time spent here is time spent (albeit indirectly) thinking about porn.
• Do I come here to gain insight into my addiction and how to fight it, or to see if anyone has liked or responded to my posts? That's a worry.
• It is easy to lose sense of time here. Even a simple response like this one takes ages, and it is easy to get lost in threads I had no intention of reading.

No, apart from a couple of sub-forums (like this one) the site is focussed on recovering from porn addiction. Both Reddit and Youtube have a million subreddits and channels that will actually pull you back towards porn! That's dangerous.

The way I do it is to stop for a month every year or two. But your idea of

sounds good. I'm not sure about this though:

Sure, skip journalling if you've nowt to say, but if there is lots you need to get down write it somewhere else (paper, Google Doc, …) and you can turn it into a journal post here later if you want, or just keep it elsewhere.

 

Of course you will create a dependence with nofap forums if you gonna use it.
The question is how bad that is.

I joined the club in October 2017. That means I've been here a member for 5 and half years.
In the beginning I was without work and I spent 3 or more hours a day on the forums.
I started to welcome all the newcomers, like all the profile posts and soon I had my first 10000 likes.
But... this all was far more better then to jump back into my fetishes in that time.

I got involved in all kind of discussions, learnt to express myself better. People sometimes thought my English was my first language lol what is not.
I became more careful when I had some very tough spiritual battles with reallly toxic people here.
I decided to only spent time on nofap to write in my own journal.

Since summer 2021 I'm free from porn and fetishes. Since then I lost my interest to read a lot.
I feel more and more disgust when I read guys asking the same question about sex or their dick or their fluids.
It has become so disgusting to me.

Over the years I picked up my own real life. Started a venture to earn some bucks the way I want.
I started a study because I want to become a professional helper.

From time to time I receive private mails from people who are in need.
Sometimes we had constructive helping conversations, but most of the time the writer doesn't even give an answer back. What is not funny to be honest.

And these days I finally have the idea to close this account and enjoy my real life.
2 years free from porn, I really have had enough of this shit.

So everything has its time. I really am benefit by the use of this forum, I met a lot of awesome people.
And this was the first place I met where I was able to become so vulnerable to share all the details of my dark fetishes.

So it's not problematic if you become dependent onto this social media. Let it happen.
In the mean time develop your own life so you will enter a moment that your dependencies in your real life will let you float away naturally from nofap (and other social media).

 

I know what you mean, I've been the same before. It almost felt like I replaced the time I would have spent watching porn by coming here instead. Undoubtedly, it is better to come here than to go back to porn but I too felt like it wasn't a good thing afterall. It felt like leaving porn left a huge, gaping hole in my heart, which I tried to fill by all means necessary because the pain was to great to deal with. So, I filled that void with coming here and talking with people. For a while, that was a good thing and it helped but I realized that this forum - as helpful as it can be - can't fill the void I feel. It is just another bandaid and spending so much time here kept me from looking for a real solution. So, nowadays, I only come here sporadically mainly to talk to a good friend on the site; I post only seldom and read even less. Not sure if it's the better alternative, but at least I have more time on my hands to do other things.