Should I Masturbate Every Time Urge Comes?

NO NO NO NO NO. Your mind is desperately seeking that blast of dopamine. You need to get over this hump and once you get past 2 months you will start to get your brain back up to speed.

 

No! Face the fact that urges are part of a reboot, and falling for them will never help you. Learn to manage your urges. Find other stuff to do to get your mind off of them.

 

You might be having a flatline. It's part of the healing process.

Please read the articles on the main site, where it explains all of this. Don't mess up your reboot by masturbating.

 

Uff always the same with you people and your holy reboot.

Ask first. Lilblack2003 what are your plans? Do you want to do the classic reboot, no porn, no masturbation, no orgasms (meaning no sex)?
Or do you only want to get rid of your porn addiction?

If you want full reboot, listen to the guys who already replied. If you simply want to get rid of porn, masturbating every once in a while is fine.

 

Ignore the urge and face it. It will strengthen your mind a bit and you are becoming a stronger person. If you go with an urge you will stay addicted to what your mind dictates you.

 

@ZenAF, most of the articles I've read and some people who made it past a year suggest avoiding any orgasms during the first 30-90 days of rebooting. So, even if you're not trying to eliminate masturbation, it's generally a good idea to avoid it for a while after you start. It comes from a simple fact that your brain is so full of porn that masturbating would still involve porn-induced fantasies, which are a porn substitute. That's no good.

@Lilblack2003, I suggest you avoiding masturbation, fantasies, triggers (images, anime, hot girls on Instagram/YouTube/etc), and orgasms for a while. Then, after 3 months or so, compare how you feel and how your brain works with what you've felt before. Then you can decide if you need masturbation or not.

 

I'm sorry but that's not "a fact". That's woo woo-science. There is a world of difference whether you create your own fantasies or whether you consume porn. One consists of your own taste in life and another consists of external stimuli.
The only exception might be if you're trying to get rid of a particular fetish. Then of course it will take longer to get rid of it if you still fantasize about it.

Otherwise I really don't see the benefit. I think the chances that you relapse with porn is much higher if you also deny yourself masturbation. Because porn and masturbation are still synonymous since the last time you did it.
However if you train your brain that it doesn't need porn to cum, it will let go of it. Porn is just means to an end after all, but the addicts brain forgot that. Time it remembers.

But I guess some people rather indulge with idea of the magical reboot than to efficiently get rid of their porn addiction.

 

@ZenAF , according to the documentation and videos on both this site and others, fantasizing still stimulates the dopamine that porn would stimulate. Maybe not to the same extent, but nevertheless still stimulated.

The point of a hard reboot is not "magical" as you claim, but to cause the brain to reabsorb the excess dopamine receptors (if you read the documentation and view relevant training videos, you will understand where this comes from; it is the same principle as for drug addiction).

It seems to take roughly 90 days (it's not an exact figure, and varies widely between people) for the process to either complete or at least make a significant impact. Abstaining from masturbation at the same time helps to achieve this. It's not the only reason why; another is that for many addicts, continuing to masturbate during this critical time seems to lead inexorably back to porn and thus full relapse. In other words, the opposite of what you say would happen.

Of course, everyone is different. There are some people (they seem to be in the small minority) who find rebooting easier with occasional masturbation rather than full abstinence.

No one is claiming that the reboot is magical. They claim only that it provides a head start, saving time on the healing process. You mentioned efficiency; a hard reboot is the most efficient way. Not the only way, of course, but the most efficient way.

 

I can only speak from personal experience. Whenever I tried just M. I never made it past 2 months without relapsing back to porn.

 

The hard reboot is not the most efficient way, at least not for me. I've tried to quit for 2 years, my longest streak used to be 17 days and every day was a struggle. I've tried the hard reboot.
Now I'm simply quitting porn. I'm on my longest streak and it's easy. No struggle, no mental battles. Considering how difficult all my attempts used to be and how long I've been trying to quit, the fact that I'm having such an easy time is baffling to me. I don't assume that I belong to some "special minority" or that I'm more disciplined than anybody else, that's why I'm not convinced that a hard reboot is the most efficient way.

I'm a rubber meets the road guy. Some video may tell you one thing, your experiences another. I know from a psychological perspective that continuous failing to achieve a goal is not only a source of depression but also an indication that the goal is set too high. Going cold turkey with 0 porn, 0 masturbation, 0 orgasms is a very high goal. You can fail at it for years or you can achieve smaller goals and gain confidence instead. The turtle wins the race.
I'm just telling you the standard procedure with people who have depression, anxiety and addictions too. It's small incremental steps towards a higher goal. Not all at once, that doesn't work from a therapeutic perspective.

At the end of the day we just want to get better and people have a right to hear from a different perspective. The 'reboot'-method is being preached enough, if that's not working, they should try doing things my way.