P.A.W.S. - what are they, cure, duration

My sincerest advice is no matter how bad your paws symptoms are such as depression, anxiety, panic attacks, brain fog.. start approaching women. It will help with your recovery and at 3 months it is not time to consider masturbating in my opinion. In fact if you aren’t actively dating or attempting to approach the opposite sex that is where you must start. It will benefit your recovery in several very important ways. It will get you out of your comfort zone that you most likely retreat to as an addict. It will make you confront your anxiety. It will boost your confidence whether you have much success at first or not, just knowing that you took that step raises your self respect. It will help redirect your sexuality out into the world and will accelerate rewiring especially if you get some dates under your belt or even go further than that intimately. If you say that you don’t want to because of a lack of libido, not only should you still do it but you DEFINITELY should not be thinking of MO’ing yet and certainly not PMO ever again.

 

what your saying makes sense thank you. Currently anxious panicked can’t get outbid bed. Not changed clothes or washed in a few day’s. I get up to go walk and I start crying and turn round and get back into bed.

mom on dating apps plenty of matches just not interested in pursuing. I feel like on a date I’d feel like some weird shaking zombie drug addict.

much worse than when I started this process. Feels like I’m getting worse and worse.

it’s making me bit weird and obsessional, like I’m stalking my ex and harrassing her. I wanted to break up from her but I’m like a needy emotional wreck.

it’s bizzare what this does to you. Feel like a crack addict shaking in bed. Pressure in my crotch that feels like a itch that needs to be scratched.

im actually a normal decent looking reasonably confident person.

 

I feel ya dude I’ve been there. I also did go on dates feeling like that, for the most part it was with girls that wanted to go out with me and initiated the “romance”. This might be hard to wrap your head around right now but to be blunt.. so what? You feel like shit, you’re spazzing, anxious, lethargic, and? What is the woman you’re with gonna do at worst? Leave the date early? Not call you back? Tell her friends you’re weird? What is she gonna do that stops you from taking a chance at moving your recovery in a positive direction by getting a bit of rewiring and social skills? This might be too much of a truth bomb and I’m really not trying to debate it here but what really improved my dating life, relationships and mindset with women is certain redpill content. I know, trigger warning. Here’s the deal there is a lot of stuff that is angry and bitter but that is not stuff I go near or would advise people to go near. Look up Tom Torero and watch his videos if you are curious. Most pleasant loveable guy in the world who is a “PUA”. Redpill is basically darwinianism applied to dating. None of society’s story that we’ve been told but cold hard female and male psychology. There are many evolutionary psychology books that spell these things out. I guess the point I’m trying to get at is, you aren’t risking blowing it with “the one” there is no “the one” there are many great women and there are many lousy women. At the end of the day they are all just women, another human being, and your pool of available options is endless and you should learn to cultivate that mindset in order to not worry about blowing it with one woman. Here’s a secret, you can be on your A game with a woman and have the best time you’ve ever had with a woman and she still might not call you back or want to see you again and that’s ok. On to the next. So say you go on a date and you’re a complete wreck, ok so try again with another girl and build up some callouses. Also fuck the dating apps they are completely unnecessary, men who are on them appear thirsty and weak because a “high value” man would be willing to put his balls on the line and approach the women he sees in his day to day life that he finds attractive. They also give a false perspective on what women want and also a false perception of the quality of women you can get. On the flip side of the same coin, the hottest and most personable women you could get are not on those apps because they have more options in real life than they could ever take up, so go put yourself out there and be a cut above the rest if you want to date. Just my two cents. Last month a girl added me on Facebook and had stunning pictures, when we went on a date she was nowhere near as hot as her pictures and a total bore in the conversation department. Without risk there is no reward and the funny thing about life is that in my experience, when I’ve acted in spite of fear I’ve gained the most and when I’ve hesitated due to fear I’ve lost the most. Fear, especially induced by recovery, has yielded some of the most amazing opportunities, some of which I’ve taken and most of which I lost. I can say for sure that I’ve been in a state quite similar to where you are and had women all over me and thought to myself, “how the fuck is this happening” pied, panic attacks, depression, woman on top of me and despite how awful I was feeling before, you will get endorphins hanging out with a new woman who is into you and it will leave you feeling better than you did prior. Your own mind can be your biggest enemy during recovery and what people see on the outside can differ GREATLY from what you feel on the inside. Take it with a grain of salt, just leaving my advice here for anyone that cares. If you don’t, that’s fine too.

 

Day 132. Still feeling like absolute shit. I'm not gonna lie. Sometimes I wonder if I'm even making any progress at all. The worst thing for me is sleep disturbances. I keep having stressful vivid dreams constantly every night and wet dreams every week or so. Sometimes I'll even have 2 consecutive wet dreams one night after the other. I'm not sure if this is harming my reboot in any type of way but I can't seem to stop them no matter what I try. They just happen. I been so stressed out for the past few weeks that I been losing hair and getting dandruff. My skin is also pretty bad. I have rosacea. Not to mention that I recently started noticing a numb and tingly feeling on the upper left side of my back. I'm not sure if this is all related to PAWS but I wouldn't be surprised. I think years of pmo and kindling have done a considerable amount of damage on my nervous system. Last time I relapsed I felt my whole body shaking up and I'm pretty sure that if I relapse again it's gonna be the same if not worse. So I'm not thinking about pmoing until I reach 200 days at least

 

You not doing hard mode if you still masturbating, sorry, but the only way to heal is by abstaining from sexual activities alltogether. I know it's impossible to completely avoid sexual fantasies but you need to stop consciously browsing for girls on the internet. Everytime you checking out females online it's reactivating the same dopamine pathways as pmo, and when you masturbate you probably still subconsciously thinking about pmo. So try to find non-sexual dopamine creating activities to fill the void created by porn. Just my 2 cents man

 

One thing different in my experience to most of you is that I have no problem with sleep. If anything my sleep has improved. I used to wake up every night having to urinate a tiny amount before I could sleep again. Now I sleep solid 8-10 hours every night.

Mornings are the worst for me, I usually feel better and slightly more optimistic in the evening.

I was optimistic last night. Focused hard on meditation as I fell to sleep. But I’ve just woken up Completely lifeless with loud tinnitus. Don’t want to move.

I don’t have any physical symptoms really, I feel it’s all in my brain.

 

When did I say that you should remove all sources of dopamine? Maybe you should read my post properly. I only said that you should avoid pornography and masturbation.

 

I’m sick of reading flatline advice to exercise, socialise etc

Am I the only one that does these things and it makes me feel worse?

I go walking fir three hours every morning in nature. Listen to music but every morning without fail I feel significantly worse at the end of the walk than the start. I just return home and crawl into bed.

It’s like the only source of dopamine for me is O. I’m just dead to everything else. My brain only wants the O, anything else I try I feel worse.

Am I the only one with this?

 

I feel you man. I hate dealing with people right now. It's like everything they do just irritates me and drains me. I also feel like they're watching and judging me all the time. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.

 

Yeah I recently come out of a relationship.

my addiction has nothing to do with porn. I never watched it. I think I O too much in my life.

sex or m has the same affect on me.

 

you might be right.

but there’s no medical proof paws is connected to porn equally. In fact sex or Masturbation addiction is more widely accepted than porn.

this site has a semen retention section so I wouldn’t say it’s just for porn users.

your probably right though. But I’ve explored literally other avenue and I get all the symptoms of paws and masturbation but without porn.

it’s worth a go. I’m not the only one on here.

 

I’ve been analysed by many professionals. Nothing wrong found. I have Ed, depression, anxiety all the symptoms. Orgasm makes me feel worse.

you get paws from stopping anything you was addicted to. I was addicted to o, up to five time’s a day.

But I think you mean well. Thanks.

 

ive seen a psychiatrist.
This thread is about paws.
i have all the symptoms since withdrawing from O.
None of us have a diagnosis. There is no concrete scientific evidence on any of this.

thanks for doing your utmost to make me feel helpless. Let’s stop clouding this thread. If you’d like to “help” me further private message me.

 

Who the fuck you think you are telling people to see a psychiatrist? Having multiple orgasms a day is certainly not good for you. You have any idea how many minerals your body loses when you constantly ejaculate? Stop trying to belittle him just because he says he's not addicted to pmo. Sex addiction can be almost as bad and no fucking pills from a psychiatrist will help. Psychotropic medications have been scientifically proven to shrink your brain. So that will just make things worse.

 

No you're not. I get much worse with exercise and activity, and many other people on this thread have documented the same thing. At certain phases in recovery there do seem to be periods where people are, to use a medical term, intolerant of exercise.

 

it is t just exercise for me, it’s anything that should give a short term high or lift.

eating lots, junk food, alcohol, music, being social, exercise

all things normal people do for pleasure generally make me feel worse. However when I have a rare good period I get pleasure out if these things and get a lift.

Also I’ve noticed that after a binge of O I sometimes enjoy all of the above for a short while.

confused by it all. Part of me thinks I’ve got a addiction problem but part of me feels I need sexual activity to enjoy life.

Day 97. I really need a lift a change to give me hope.

 

Totally agree. Whether you believe in semen loss, or dopamine dis-regulation, both processes can happen with too much PMO, or conventional sex. I've experienced withdrawals after either, when done to excess. So as far as I'm concerned, experiencing PAWS without PMO seems possible. Really, it's the O that's the problem.

 

If we have to work without suitable diagnoses, or scientific evidence, it's because this phenomenon is new, and also saddled with a lot of cultural baggage. It takes a long time for something to be observed, and then the science to be done thoroughly enough to give a definitive conclusion. In the meantime, anyone with a new idea has to wade through the scepticism of people who probably know absolutely nothing, but think they know it all. We are simply at the start of this process, and it could take decades before anything meaningfully useful has been proven, but I think in this case, it will.

So in the meantime it is perhaps good manners, on this thread especially, to keep an open mind and avoid lecturing people. We're just trying to figure things out as best we can.

 

PS - just remembered - this is exactly what Marnia Robinson (Gary Wilson's wife) talks about in Cupids Poison Arrow - the effects of orgasm on the state of your mind. It's pretty profound!

 

And I'm saying that you can have PAWS from excessive orgasm, without using porn.