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The Cost of Cutting an addiction

Discussion in 'New to NoFap' started by chickensloser, Mar 23, 2020.

  1. chickensloser

    chickensloser New Fapstronaut

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    This was meant for reddit but keeps getting automatically removed. Figured I'd share my story here. I'm a 27 year old guy who started the Nofap process 4 years ago, when I was 23.

    I had a pretty normal day by my standards (quarantine or not). I had some coffee, ate some frozen food(that I heated up), played video games, watched shows, and read a lot of random stuff on the internet. This itinerary is almost exactly the same as what I was doing 4 years ago, except for one glaring difference. I didn’t masturbate 3-7 times today, for 2-4 hours. I didn’t masturbate when I woke up, I didn’t masturbate before I went to bed the night before, in fact I haven’t masturbated in months. I haven’t had the urge, I haven’t really had it since I started nofap, about 4 years ago.

    See, I started at an extremely young age, I don’t know how or when exactly I learned, but I know I did it in kindergarten. It was nap time, and I started humping my hand on my nap pad until the teacher told me to stop. Even though I was 5 at the time, I don’t think that process (prone masturbation) was something new to me. I easily could have discovered prone masturbation at 3 or 4 (or 2 even, but that sounds too young to even be possible, I just don’t remember). I of course didn’t use porn or any material at this time (I didn’t even know what sex was), it just felt good so I did it.

    And WOW did I do it. Especially in the mornings and before I went to bed. I probably did it almost every night before I slept, sometimes multiple times. Why wouldn’t I? This simple activity felt great and it helped me fall asleep. As I got older, it only got worse. I started using more material, first random girls in magazines, then youtube videos, and eventually porn. I “discovered” the other kind of masturbation (fapping) my freshmen year of high school, and I started doing that a lot more. I was a super skinny, pimply, ugly kid, with horrible, crushing anxiety with women I was attracted to. A girlfriend wasn’t a realistic option for me. Not to mention my high standards due to excessive masturbation/porn.

    So my addiction got worse and worse. I went to college, and was equally challenged on getting a girlfriend or even just having sex, which i was absolutely desperate for. It consumed ALL my thoughts 24/7. And it sucked, because I thought I was way too ugly to get a girlfriend I wanted. I thought there was no possible way I would overcome my anxiety to actually go on a date, let alone kiss someone. I did everything I could to improve my looks. I got on intense acne treatment, I worked out religiously, ate as much as I could to gain muscle, I even did every facial exercise I could find online. I bought tough chewing gum I found on the internet, thinking it would improve my facial appearance. Getting a girlfriend/sex consumed all my thoughts, because I was constantly refreshing it in my mind by masturbating. The feeling of masturbating got better and better, even in college with roommates I was doing it 3-5 times a day. It got to the point where I would get hard just starting to type por(for pornhub) into the browser. My brain knew what was coming.

    Throughout this whole time, I would say I was pretty happy. It’s like masturbating relieved me of all of life's problems (except when it came to women). It was almost as if I was on a constant high, with my brain flooded with dopamine from masturbating. It felt like I was a loser in high school/college, but I didn’t care. I was having fun and still enjoying life.

    At the same time, this contentment reduced all pressure or urge to achieve anything. I was absolutely an underachiever in middle school, high school, and college. I went to a shitty college I didn’t belong to, and I was lucky to even go to college at all since my parent’s basically set me up for it. I passed all my classes doing the absolute bare minimum and ate quite unhealthy as well. The only thing I worked hard on was working out, but that’s because I was desperate for a girlfriend/sex,

    I ended up having sex once in college, two weeks before my senior year ended. It was a drunk tinder hookup, and I didn’t really enjoy it at all. I barely got hard, barely felt anything. It was so much worse than masturbating, it sucked. This was a very attractive woman, yet I got much harder just knowing I was about to masturbate than actually being with a woman. I was drunk, and it was my first time, so it was hard to tell how it would’ve felt like with more normal consistency. I wasn’t able to find out pre-nofap.

    So I graduated from my shitty college, with an extremely easy degree (marketing), and my studying habits carried over to my job search. I was living at my parent's place, desperate to get out, but the effort I spent getting a job was laughable. I ended up taking a terrible cold calling job, far worse than my friends, and far worse than the Job I should’ve been at, in a city I didn’t really want to be in, simply because it was the first job I was offered.

    Even with a full-time job, nothing really changed in my life. I looked forward to going home so I could masturbate. Sometimes I even masturbated when I went home for my lunch break. On a normal weekday, I'd prone masturbate or jack off in the morning, jack off like 3 times when I got home, and then before I went to bed I’d prone masturbate - sometimes multiple times if I didn’t fall asleep easily after the first.

    I had two dates during this time, and I’m pretty sure I fucked both of them up by being way too anxious/nervous. I still wanted a girlfriend, it still consumed all my thoughts, but I simply wasn’t in any position to attract who I wanted to attract. The high standards from my years and years of porn abuse certainly fucked me, and my crippling anxiety with women wasn’t going away anytime soon. It felt like I would be stuck alone for who knows how long.

    I couldn’t deal with my shitty job anymore and quit after 5 months. Turns out my awkward ass can’t cold call for shit. I didn’t have a job lined up, so I was unemployed not doing anything but losing money on the stock market trying to trade. I just masturbated every few hours, totaling 3-4 hours a day. I just had an insane urge, every few hours I would get it. I’d turn on a movie or show with hot girls, and masturbate to porn and watch both at the same time. It 100% felt incredible, it felt better than it had ever been before. I had unnaturally trained my whole life to reach the highest possible pleasure I could. I perfected my technique, the edging, the searching, etc. It brought me a lot of pure pleasure, but that came with a heavy cost.

    So I was 23, never had a girlfriend, only had sex once, no job, only one friend in my city, a shitty resume, crippling anxiety with women, and I just lost half my money on the stock market. Most of all, I was somewhere In life I simply didn’t belong. I had a good personality to make friends/have a girlfriend, I was 6 1 and in pretty good shape, I was more than smart/charismatic enough to do well in a good job/relationship. That was perhaps the most frustrating part of all. I wasn’t where I should have been, because I had an addiction that took away my energy and kept me content when I had no good reason to be.

    I have been an avid Reddit user for the past 7 years. I had seen a bit of Nofap before, but never took it that seriously. I figured masturbating brought me a lot of happiness, so I’d be crazy not to do it, especially when I didn’t have much else in my life. I had certainly considered that this amount of masturbation wasn’t healthy, but the simple results online weren’t very convincing. I don’t think they’re meant for those with as serious of an addiction as I had.

    But somehow, in this period 4 years ago, I really read into nofap more. I probably stumbled across a link to it from my random redditing. But, unlike the other times I came across the subreddit, I started reading the stories from people just like me. The anxiety, the unrealistic expectations, not enjoying real sex. I read the stories of those with serious addicitons being completely unable to enjoy real sex, not even being able to get hard. I didn’t have much experience myself with actual sex, but I worried I would face the same problems.

    The prospect of taking a 90 day break, becoming more motivated, losing anxiety with women, and dragging myself out of my unemployed - loserish rut sounded great. Plus the Nofap community likes to talk about superpowers and every other benefit of not masturbating you could possibly imagine, so of course those were enticing as well. I wasn’t fully convinced I had to reset, but at the very least it seemed like a good idea to limit my addiction.

    Shortly later, I decided a small break would be good. Like over a week, and maybe even the 90 days. I remember I was about 5 days in, started talking to a girl on tinder. Not even particularly that attractive, but 5 days in - with nothing to do all day - i was bursting at the seams. I slowly started the process I (and everyone here) is all too familiar with. I even looked up a single porn video, and while hard as a rock, with my body, and brain, with years and years of addiction begging me to continue, I stopped myself. “I’m not breaking my streak,” I thought, and I zipped up my pants. That single moment may have completely changed my life. Little did I know I would never have an urge remotely comparable to that again.

    After the first week and a half of nofap, I lost almost all urge to masturbate. Not masturbating was easy. It was clear my addiction created an unhealthy feedback loop, every time I just taught my body I needed it more and more. I created such an unnatural craving for it, that a short, simple break was all my brain needed to realize that I don’t actually need it.

    I went through a fairly normal recovery period. Sleeping was hard at first, and I definitely went through some flatlines. But I became more motivated, I had more energy, I started taking cold showers, eating healthier, working out more. I actually put time and effort in to improve my resume. I started applying to jobs systematically, intelligently. I wrote much better cover letters than my addiction fueled mind did almost a year earlier. I still was lazy, I still spent most of my day not doing much, but I felt like not masturbating gave me a noticeable increase in motivation that I sorely needed. I felt like I felt great, at least the feeling of improvement itself was great.

    And that motivation helped, I got a decent job (by my standards at the time) in a much better city. I felt like I aced the interview in a way I wouldn’t have pre-NF.

    In the new city, as 90 days masturbation free was approaching, it felt like I was cured. It felt like my sexual thoughts became healthy, like I started to crave real sex vs masturbating to some shit on a screen. It felt like my anxiety with women was disappearing, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was actually ready to get a girlfriend.

    I was 23, turning 24 in a few months. So I was very behind on the experience with women front. I felt like I needed a girlfriend not just for my personal happiness, and not just for the experience with women to help me down the road, but also to help me fully recover. To help me enjoy real sex, make my brain accustomed to it, and crave it. So I got the dating apps, and started swiping.

    My online dating app “game” definitely improved post-NF. I ended up matching with, let’s call her Emma. Emma was only 19 and the hottest girl I had ever matched with, and seemed pretty cool too. I was smooth,, I was funny, I wasn’t desperate, I didn’t rush to meetup, didn’t message too often, etc. She ended up agreeing to go on a date with me and I was pretty stoked and only slightly nervous.

    In preparation, for my date, in case it led to sex, I figured I should probably masturbate a few days before so I don’t cum way too quickly. I wanted to do it in a healthy way of course, so no porn. I used lotion (which I used to never use), I only used photos of the girl I was going on a date with, and tried to focus on the feeling instead of letting my thoughts stray to unhealthier territories.

    The thing is, this felt different, literally. I wasn’t that turned on, I didn’t really enjoy it, the feeling didn’t really build up. I came quickly, and it just dripped out with almost no feeling. An incredible contrast to the days where I would set aside an hour or two to experience a sensation better than almost anything I can think of. Little did I know this was a sign of what was to come.

    Date with Emma went well, she was very attractive in person, and I played it super cool. My anxiety was basically completely gone, even though this was by far the hottest girl I’d remotely had a chance with. The date led back to my place where we fooled around. We probably would’ve had sex that night, if I had the urge to. While I felt like I was attracted to her, I didn’t have the urge to fuck her (it wasn’t a her thing, this applied to all women). I would get kinda hard when making out, but it would quickly disappear. No blueballs, nothing. It felt like the reason my anxiety with women went away was because my urge to have sex with them completely went away. That’s not a price I wanted to or planned on paying.

    I kept seeing Emma, and really enjoyed my time with her. We would have sex sometimes, but it never went very well. I couldn’t always get hard, and when I did I came quickly. The pleasure was hardly measurable, seriously comparable to taking a bite of a dorito. I could feel the physical sensation of cumming but the accompanying pleasure was nowhere to be found.

    I think I tried masturbating more during this time, even using porn, and nothing helped. The pleasurable sensation was almost completely gone. I couldn't become addicted to porn or masturbating again even if I wanted to, there was no pleasure to be addicted to.

    This wasn’t what I signed up for. I had no idea that the cost of temporarily pausing my lifelong masturbation habits meant no more sexual pleasure.

    Emma eventually became my girlfriend, and sex really wasn’t frequent. Mostly due to my lack of urge/ability to be hard. I found out she used to be very promiscuous and was kind of the stereotype for the hot but crazy girl. Since she was hot, and my first girlfriend, I started to fall in love with her.

    And it, CRUSHED me, knowing that she had much better sex, and much more sex, with her vast multitude of partners than with me. I wanted nothing more than to want to have sex with this very attractive woman I was able to call my girlfriend, but I couldn’t. It, unfortunately, was out of my control. I tried pills, stimulants, mental practices, libido-boosting foods, kegels, everything I could possibly think of. Nothing helped. Instead, I got all the downsides of a crazy/bitchy girlfriend and none of the positives (like great, hot sex). She was the type of person that would have had sex with me whenever I wanted, that was clearly good in bed, and far out of my league in attractiveness that she’s not easily replaceable for me. She would have been perfect for my sexually unhealthy, constantly horny pre nofap mind.

    So I got the hot girlfriend I had always dreamed about. A girlfriend that I was in love with, and thought was more attractive than almost any other girl in the world. A girlfriend that would have sex with me. Sex, the act on mind almost 24/7 from middle school till NF (11 years), and I couldn’t take advantage of it. Sex, the number 1 object of my insecurity, the only thing I felt like I was really lacking in life for most of my Pre Nofap life. It was a horrible feeling. I didn’t even enjoy having her as a gf that much. She was hard to deal with, and eventually I felt like I had to break up with her after 6 or so months, without ever really enjoying sex with her.

    Getting over her took much longer, it felt, and still feels like an opportunity in my life I’ll never get back. I’ll never have my first love again, and I don’t think I’d want to be in a relationship with someone like her again. That's one of the many prices I guess I have to pay for my long addiction.

    That relationship ended 3 years ago, and luckily for me things have gotten a bit better since. My Libido, and sexual pleasure is slowlyyyyyy improving. Orgasm’s have slowly been getting stronger, erections harder, and the build up more intense. But even now, 4 years after I started Nofap, I wouldn’t say I’ve fully recovered. It’s hard to say where I will plateau and if that will even come close to the pleasure I had before nofap, but I think I have a few more years left to improve. I got a better job in a great city (not a great job, but good for me). I’ve had sex with a few more women, and got out of an 8 month relationship recently. Where the sex was 100% the best i’ve had in my life (which isn’t saying much haha). It’s actually pretty hard to date without having the normal urge for sex. It’s like the glue that usually keeps people seeing each other in the beginning isn’t really there for me. I’ve stopped seeing quite a few girls, and prevented quite a few possibly good relationships from blooming, simply because the sex wasn’t a draw like it normally is. On the plus side, dates don’t make me very nervous and I’ve been gaining a lot of valuable experience figuring out my type.

    In other life stuff, I feel like I've been improving every year. I’ve been eating healthier than I ever have, I run home from work, and I lift 3-4 times a week. I also stopped drinking alone, which has cut out 95% of my drinking.

    It’s hard to say where I would have been without nofap. My Progress isn’t incredible, the two jobs I got since aren’t jobs I would say I couldn’t have gotten while still addicted to porn/masturbation. I’ve improved myself/my habits multiple times before my reset, so I’m not sure what difference nofap has made. I still do many of the same things. I’m lazy at my job, I play a lot of video games at night, I don’t have many friends, I don’t do a whole lot. I don’t dream like I used to pre NF, but I think that’s starting to improve. I also feel like I deal with flatlines still. I go weeks where I just feel a bit off, a bit less happy than normal. I don’t enjoy music as much, I don’t crave good food/caffeine like I do when I’m happier, and I don’t crave sex/masturbation.

    Those lack of cravings make it easier to maintain good habits, but I don’t think that’s worth it at the cost of my happiness. I would much rather crave those things and say no to them, than not crave those things because I'm depressed.

    I think that kind of sums up what nofap has done to me. My reset made me less anxious with women. Not because the “superpowers” simply got rid of my anxiety, but because it got rid of my sexual attraction for women. Hard to be anxious around them when they feel just like anyone else. Maybe that’s what I needed, but it wasn’t what I expected or wanted.

    Even now, 4 years after I started my reset, my best guess is my sexual pleasure is about a third of what it should be. That is progress, because it was probably 1/100th in my first year. It comes and goes.

    But was this really worth it? Am I really better off because of Nofap, or did I waste years of sexual pleasure/happiness for it? That of course, is impossible to say. I’m not sure if I would’ve gotten my current job without nofap. I’m not sure how/when I would have overcome my anxiety with women. I still don’t quite feel I’m where I belong in life. Before, it felt like my masturbation addiction was holding me back. Now, it feels like I haven’t recovered enough yet to fully push myself.

    Part of me definitely wishes I did things differently. Maybe because I started at such a young age and my addiction was that bad, I shouldn’t have cut it off cold turkey. It feels like It would have been better to slowly wean myself off. Once a day to a few times a week, along with practicing better/healthier masturbation habits. Maybe that way my libido wouldn’t have absolutely been fucked. Of course I don’t know if I’d have the willpower to do that, since the urges for more would be consistently high.

    I wish I could confidently say Nofap was worth it. Four years later, I can’t. It simply hasn’t paid off yet. I think one day that will change. When it does, I’ll make sure to let you guys know.

    But if you’re anything like me, just know this isn’t going to be a quick or easy process. It’s not just 90 days, it might be years, or even the rest of your life.

    Thanks for reading, and best of luck.
     
    The Free Bird likes this.
  2. chickensloser

    chickensloser New Fapstronaut

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