My goals are the same as yours, about clarity, energy, less stimulation, discipline, also I think there is a lot of prosperity in a reboot, or after. That clarity is so powerful, I have been there. I want to get back to that state.
I am recovering from severe depression and PMO was one of the ways I coped with my killing lows. I didn't think there was a problem with that because it helped me feel better that moment and later would just numb me and wipe my emotions off me, and it was better than the unbearable lows. My therapist told me that my behavior was addictive and I had to cut off instant gratification because it will only aggravate my situation, but I denied the addiction part. Reading some clinical books in psychology, learning about neuroplasticity, trauma and anxiety, and related subjects that were relavant to my situation, I understood that it was necessary for me to abstain from instant gratification. I tried, but I kept relapsing in a week or two because my brain would cleverly and persistently manipulate me to desperately get out of my low. I understood this was a problem, was it addiction? After one such relapses that left me broken and numb for two days doing nothing, my therapist told me I could join the NoFap community and that it would help me abstain. And he was right! I am so grateful to this community for their support and companionship -- I am now clean for over a month! NoFap is an important battle in my war with depression along with many other battles I am fighting at the same time. The little progress I am able to make by taking it one day at a time is giving me hope. I am already seeing the brain fog disappear and I am able to manage my lows better with healthy activities and no PMO. I will fight this battle and every other one with my full capacity and I will keep going till I win my war!
I have been enslaved to porn for many years, and i'm tired of it I have wasted many opportunities in life by being too busy maintaining a habit that damaged me physically and mentally. For years I have suffered from chronic social anxiety, being unable to even start a casual conversation with people I have known for several months (such as classmates or neighbors), let alone strangers. I didn't even feel able to look someone in the eye when speaking, so I just stood there silently staring uncomfortably at the ground being surrounded by people. I had no hobbies or interests, from the moment I woke up until I fell asleep I only thought about the videos and images that I could be seeing on the internet, so I was quite boring. In recent years I neglected my health, I was overweight due to a poor diet and little physical activity. My mind was so damaged that I only saw women as simple objects (and although I am ashamed to say it, I must be honest with my fellow fighters here present). I relapsed over and over again, always saying I'd do better next time, always failing a day or two later (or sometimes that very day). There were times when I would stay up until 3 am looking for more images or videos, or if I fell asleep early, I would wake up in the middle of the night so anxious that I would get out of bed and go straight to the pc. A lot has changed in the last month. Since I started using these forums I am taking everything much more seriously. I have only had two relapses in a month and I am determined to do much better this time, I want not only to beat my record, but to get rid of this useless and harmful addiction once and for all. I have hobbies and interests and I enjoy them. What for years I thought impossible I began to achieve: not only am I able to converse with others, but I even enjoy it. Now my third week in the gym and I also eat healthier, I have lost almost 5 pounds in that time. I sleep more and better because I no longer wake up for the most absurd reasons. My main goals are to be able to reach my true potential, to know what I am capable of once I am not a slave to the computer, the sky is the limit. I know that I have a long way to go, that I will have to face the impulses over and over again while my brain resets. But do you want to know something? I'm ready and eager for battle, let the addiction attack me with everything, I'm not afraid, because now I begin to know my true power. Power and glory my brothers.
Day 21 Made it. Got out of the urge. Drowned still and don’t feel well. Quite affected physically today. Need to rest. Wow what a drag.
I watched hentai at a really young age, maybe 12-13, don't remember when but I do know I ended up as a real nutjob, then in high school I toned it down and almost even quit porn at 14-15 but because I was still going through puberty, naturally I was drawn to even more hentai Then i lived maybe 4-6 more years of PMOing every 1-3 days, and I'd always waste maybe 30m looking for the perfect picture/video I don't actually feel that strong about staying committed to nofap, but I still remember how tired and socially anxious or an asshole I used to be, so I stick to it blindly, not knowing how long my streak is or the last time I relapsed. The only thing that matters to me in nofap is today and not yesterday or tomorrow as long as I can just make it through one more day. Anyway, I think my real motivation is just to see what I could have been like if I quit years ago and just get through each day without feeling like dogshit
The urge to still keep coming in Hawaii doesn’t help that’s just so many girls that look so extremely hot dressing so extremely tempting but I will not get sucked in
I started nofap because i was addicted but more than that i wanted to bulit a better self of me wanted to achieve my goals rather than fapping and wasting time because to achieve my goal abstaining form pmo was the only way and that pmo was stopping me everytime and i saw what all benefits it brought experienced it taste of it made me more enthusiastic and loved it so i started nofap.
My main reason for joining nofap is because I want to develop self-control, and be able to experience life . I hated it when I was younger, I felt almost a slave that every time I felt stressed, I would go back to porn as a type of escapism, and I would feel absolutely terrible. I eventually learnt how porn affects your brain and how drug-addiction-like it is, and I was very punishing on myself. I've been part of NoFap for ~2 years, and even though my longest streak ever here was 22 days without busting, NoFap has taught me some valuable things: Instead of beating yourself up and punishing yourself for your mistakes, you must learn from them, and never give up no matter what. I still am committed to beating that 22 day streak and getting further. And also, Idk precisely why, but abstaining from masturbation helps me feel more confident as a person. It has changed my mindset towards life for the better (for me personally), when I was a teenager I thought your life wasn't complete without sex, without having a partner/whoever. Now, I feel that there is much more to life than just sex, or getting married, etc, and there is nothing wrong with having a healthy sex life or happy marrage/whatever-floats-your-boat, but that cannot coexist with porn. I personally don't know what I want in my sex life, or if I even want a sex life (Idk if I've hit the flatline, where you don't experience any drive towards the opposite sex, etc), but my mindset has changed that even if I didn't have a sex life, I would still be happy as a person being in control over my emotions and my urges. Basically, your life's satisfaction shouldn't depend on your sexual satisfaction. Now, that's not everyone's cup of tea, but it would work for me and I would be happy with that. And, either way I want to go with my life, I am all the richer without pornography in it. If nothing else motivated me, it would be that I am so damn sick of porn and how it warped my mind when I was young. I think next time I should get an urge, I will report here straight away because now I feel more committed to beating this demon than before.
I also experienced that, where you try and find the 'perfect' porn, and eventually I realised you will never find it because of how massive the internet is. Have you read 'The library of babel' by Jorge Borges? The internet is nowhere near as big as the fictional library, but it is big enough to get the idea. Then what ends up happening is that it burns more and more of your time, all the while your brain gets exposed to more and more messed up images and content that could potentially leave you scarred for life. And even if you found the 'perfect porn', it won't be that way forever, because dopamine tolerance happens and your brain will eventually seek more novelty coming up with a new 'perfect porn', and burn more time. The biggest thing my addiction did was tell me 'Just one/five minute(s) to look for this one video' and then it's like 30 minutes to like 2 hours later trying to search for that 'perfect video'. It took me a long time to learn to see past that. I think this lesson also applies not just to porn, but social media and youtube as well, as there are so many videos and images all yelling 'click me! watch me!' where social media websites and youtube are already so freaking huge you could spend your lifetime scrolling through it and you won't have even covered 0.0001% of the total content. And on top of that, every second there are probably several hundred thousand hours more worth of videos and images being uploaded. So I thought to myself 'I better be really careful of how much time I spend on these platforms, because I don't want to spend my whole life on it, I want to be able to experience life more.' It also took me a long time to realise that. I don't think it's something you can fix in one day, but I think it's a good idea to monitor how much time a day you spend on these platforms, because they could also burn your time away just like porn does. I have installed an addon to my browser that hides the recommendations from youtube, as well as the shorts, and home feed, called 'unhook'. it also has a bunch of other options to hide other unnecessary rubbish that can burn time.
Welcome to the fam! Be sure to read the rules, be respectful to everyone and also take part in the community challenges. I just posted one above so try doing that rn. Good luck.
