What I have gathered after 10 years on NoFap

[404_Reboot]

I will make this quick to maximise the amount of people who will read it. If you have any questions about any point, feel free to ask.

1. There is no going back once you quit. There is no masturbation after 90 days. For many, coming to terms with this is an understandably anxious thought - PMO has been apart of us for years.
2. Just because your addiction has not progressed into the abnormal side of porn - even after years of consumption - doesn’t mean it ever will. When I was consuming porn, I was comforted by the belief that, “it will never get to the point where I’m doing X”. And yet it did, and it did so subtly.
3. r/NoFap may not help. You need to seriously devise your own deep rooted reasons. Simply quitting because it’s meant to improve your life is not good enough. Your why needs to be comprehendible to you, and only you.
4. Most urges you deal with are not urges, they are withdrawals. I make this distinction purposefully. Withdrawing often mimics symptoms of anxiety, so begin dealing with urges like anxiety and you’ll have much more success. Realistically, you’re anxious because you cannot watch porn - for instance, your heart might race, you cannot think straight, breathing increases etc. Breath. Meditate.
   
5. The second you peak you’ve failed. I mean this practically. We both know that that one peak will eventually compound into a full on binge. May not be that day, or that week, but you’ve set a precedent by that one peak (however minor it was)
6. NoFap will not get you girls, it will not improve anxiety, it will not give you super powers. This is a miscommunication. I will explain this simply; porn is truly useless, it serves no real benefit. So by cutting it out you have the time to craft a life as though porn never existed. Exercise, study, read, build yourself up as a man (I’m speaking to the majority here).
7. Be brutally honest with your weakness - we all have our poison. 100 days down the line, you will still be a porn addict despite perfect abstinence. Don’t think you’re immune to porn, it will always come back to take you down. Consider what you’re searching for on IG or TikTok (or whatever site you use). Is it a genuine search, or are you doing it with the faint hope you will see some eGirl throwing it back, or a half naked model?

Anyway, these are the key things I have learned over the past 10 years doing this fucking shit. I hit rock bottom 25 days ago, I was sick of being average and I was sick of the idea that I would come home after a work, stay on my phone for hours, and then spend hours looking for naked women in the dark, on the computer. I was sick of the things that would get me off, and the things it eventually progressed to. I was sick of telling myself that I was destined for so much more yet staying up to 1AM jerking myself, and then being too alert to sleep. I was disgusted with who I was and demanded I changed.

 

[livinginhell]

I will make this quick to maximise the amount of people who will read it. If you have any questions about any point, feel free to ask.

1. There is no going back once you quit. There is no masturbation after 90 days. For many, coming to terms with this is an understandably anxious thought - PMO has been apart of us for years.
2. Just because your addiction has not progressed into the abnormal side of porn - even after years of consumption - doesn’t mean it ever will. When I was consuming porn, I was comforted by the belief that, “it will never get to the point where I’m doing X”. And yet it did, and it did so subtly.
3. r/NoFap may not help. You need to seriously devise your own deep rooted reasons. Simply quitting because it’s meant to improve your life is not good enough. Your why needs to be comprehendible to you, and only you.
4. Most urges you deal with are not urges, they are withdrawals. I make this distinction purposefully. Withdrawing often mimics symptoms of anxiety, so begin dealing with urges like anxiety and you’ll have much more success. Realistically, you’re anxious because you cannot watch porn - for instance, your heart might race, you cannot think straight, breathing increases etc. Breath. Meditate.
   
5. The second you peak you’ve failed. I mean this practically. We both know that that one peak will eventually compound into a full on binge. May not be that day, or that week, but you’ve set a precedent by that one peak (however minor it was)
6. NoFap will not get you girls, it will not improve anxiety, it will not give you super powers. This is a miscommunication. I will explain this simply; porn is truly useless, it serves no real benefit. So by cutting it out you have the time to craft a life as though porn never existed. Exercise, study, read, build yourself up as a man (I’m speaking to the majority here).
7. Be brutally honest with your weakness - we all have our poison. 100 days down the line, you will still be a porn addict despite perfect abstinence. Don’t think you’re immune to porn, it will always come back to take you down. Consider what you’re searching for on IG or TikTok (or whatever site you use). Is it a genuine search, or are you doing it with the faint hope you will see some eGirl throwing it back, or a half naked model?

Anyway, these are the key things I have learned over the past 10 years doing this fucking shit. I hit rock bottom 25 days ago, I was sick of being average and I was sick of the idea that I would come home after a work, stay on my phone for hours, and then spend hours looking for naked women in the dark, on the computer. I was sick of the things that would get me off, and the things it eventually progressed to. I was sick of telling myself that I was destined for so much more yet staying up to 1AM jerking myself, and then being too alert to sleep. I was disgusted with who I was and demanded I changed.

I didn't understand, have not fapped for 10 years or you have been fapping since 10 years? If you haven't for 10 years then how you hit rock bottom 25 days ago ?

 

[404_Reboot]

I didn't understand, have not fapped for 10 years or you have been fapping since 10 years? If you haven't for 10 years then how you hit rock bottom 25 days ago ?

My mistake! I’ve been struggling with porn for 10 years and have been around the NoFap community in that time. I have started my most recent streak 26 days ago - relapsing many times before that.

 

[OhWhenThe]

Agree with most of what you say but I don't like this assertion(in point 6) that porn is merely a waste of time, I think you are severely underplaying the effect that long-term PMO use can have on the brain and body. Maybe you never reached that point but many here have.

 

[404_Reboot]

Agree with most of what you say but I don't like this assertion(in point 6) that porn is merely a waste of time, I think you are severely underplaying the effect that long-term PMO use can have on the brain and body. Maybe you never reached that point but many here have.

I'm going to have to disagree. While I've seen people suffer from pornography in ways that are still unimaginable to me, I was a long-term user and I actually understand the effects porn has on the brain and body very well. I'm not saying that porn has never offered anyone an escape from a troubled life, and I never underplayed the seriousness of that dependency. But it is fundamentally useless, it serves no substantial benefit other than fulfilling an emptiness when one isn't consuming it.

I define a 'waste of time' as anything that is destructive in nature and serves no benefit to your overall wellbeing. Are you suggesting that porn is useful or a wise use of time in some circumstances? Now if you can make a case where porn isn't a waste of time, by all means I am open to being persuaded. At this point, I believe if you think porn is anything BUT a waste of time, you will be stuck justifying its use the second something triggers old neural pathways.

 

[OhWhenThe]

I'm going to have to disagree. While I've seen people suffer from pornography in ways that are still unimaginable to me, I was a long-term user and I actually understand the effects porn has on the brain and body very well. I'm not saying that porn has never offered anyone an escape from a troubled life, and I never underplayed the seriousness of that dependency. But it is fundamentally useless, it serves no substantial benefit other than fulfilling an emptiness when one isn't consuming it.

I define a 'waste of time' as anything that is destructive in nature and serves no benefit to your overall wellbeing. Are you suggesting that porn is useful or a wise use of time in some circumstances? Now if you can make a case where porn isn't a waste of time, by all means I am open to being persuaded. At this point, I believe if you think porn is anything BUT a waste of time, you will be stuck justifying its use the second something triggers old neural pathways.

No, I think you're misinterpreting my post.

I know porn is a waste of time, I know porn has no benefits. What I'm saying is that just calling it a waste of time is downplaying the effect it can have on the user. It's not only a waste of time, it can cause genuine health problems. So when you say quitting won't fix your anxiety or it won't fix this or that, I don't agree. I do think that for many here they have abused PMO to the point where it is causing, or at least exasperating, a lot of the issues and symptoms they are struggling with.

 

[404_Reboot]

No, I think you're misinterpreting my post.

I know porn is a waste of time, I know porn has no benefits. What I'm saying is that just calling it a waste of time is downplaying the effect it can have on the user. It's not only a waste of time, it can cause genuine health problems. So when you say quitting won't fix your anxiety or it won't fix this or that, I don't agree. I do think that for many they have abused PMO to the point where it is causing, or at least exasperating, a lot of the issues and symptoms they are struggling with.

Oh okay, I definitely misinterpreted what you said. Keep in mind, I deliberately simplified each point so I knew some things would come off oversimplified. That said, I agree with where you're coming from.

To elaborate further on point 6, what I see so many people get wrong is expecting NoFap alone to be some magical bullet that will resolve anxiety etc. Anxiety is super complicated and at the moment I've seen no evidence that porn addiction can act like a on-off switch for it. As you say, there may be cases where PMO does indeed directly causes anxiety, but I think those cases aren't as common. In the case of myself, I always thought my anxiety was at least somewhat exacerbated by my PMO addiction, after a 100+ day streak, my anxiety didn't really improve all that much - there was other factors involved and exposure needed.

Personally, I think to solely rely on NoFap as the cure for all of one's issues is a counterproductive way to approach this movement, it will often result in people doing nothing else for themselves other than quitting porn; which will then often manifest as forcing oneself to consciously try and not to think about porn. The primary way I have seen successful streaks - in both myself and others - is by simultaneously fixing other aspects of their life. There would be more successful streaks if people did not entirely attribute their anxieties (or other issues) to NoFap, but rather holistically analysed their life and saw NoFap as just one of the many components to their downfall. There's more to the treatment than what I have just written, and things may present more complicated case-by-case, but I think this is an important strategy. Thoughts?

 

[Freeddom_Taker]

Oh okay, I definitely misinterpreted what you said. Keep in mind, I deliberately simplified each point so I knew some things would come off oversimplified. That said, I agree with where you're coming from.

To elaborate further on point 6, what I see so many people get wrong is expecting NoFap alone to be some magical bullet that will resolve anxiety etc. Anxiety is super complicated and at the moment I've seen no evidence that porn addiction can act like a on-off switch for it. As you say, there may be cases where PMO does indeed directly causes anxiety, but I think those cases aren't as common. In the case of myself, I always thought my anxiety was at least somewhat exacerbated by my PMO addiction, after a 100+ day streak, my anxiety didn't really improve all that much - there was other factors involved and exposure needed.

Personally, I think to solely rely on NoFap as the cure for all of one's issues is a counterproductive way to approach this movement, it will often result in people doing nothing else for themselves other than quitting porn; which will then often manifest as forcing oneself to consciously try and not to think about porn. The primary way I have seen successful streaks - in both myself and others - is by simultaneously fixing other aspects of their life. There would be more successful streaks if people did not entirely attribute their anxieties (or other issues) to NoFap, but rather holistically analysed their life and saw NoFap as just one of the many components to their downfall. There's more to the treatment than what I have just written, and things may present more complicated case-by-case, but I think this is an important strategy. Thoughts?

1) May I ask how old you are??

2) I'm in tune with most of your post except the " anxiety thing" issue. Enough abstinence can resolve it. I've had it happened to me in good streaks.
3) if you are or were addicted this long, I doubt 100+ streak days will be enough to have a significant change.

In conclusion: I do think pmo is used as an escape mechanism to hide our real problems in life. By removing pmo is the first step toward working out our own issues.

 

[404_Reboot]

1) May I ask how old you are??

2) I'm in tune with most of your post except the " anxiety thing" issue. Enough abstinence can resolve it. I've had it happened to me in good streaks.
3) if you are or were addicted this long, I doubt 100+ streak days will be enough to have a significant change.

In conclusion: I do think pmo is used as an escape mechanism to hide our real problems in life. By removing pmo is the first step toward working out our own issues.

I’m 23. The addiction really kicked off at about 11/12 years old. I discovered porn at about age 7/8. I rebooted at about 15, before falling back into things after 90 days. It escalated thereafter before my 100+ streak at 19. Escalated again from about 20 years old to 26 days ago

You might be right about 100+ days not being enough for me. I’m not exactly arguing that Problematic Porn use cannot be the sole reason for anxiety in some instances. Although, I did make the claim that PMO being the sole cause is not as common. No PMO can certainly help you deal with anxiety more effectively, but at the end of the day, if you have never spoken to a girl, fapped to porn for years, abstain for however many days (100s, 1000s, whatever), it is likely you will still be anxious when it comes to talking to a girl.

But above that, I think my sentiment is being loss. To put it simply. For the most part, I don’t think people can have a successful streak if all they are doing is engaging in NoFap - while still not engaging other behaviours that align with their goals. Do you think I am seriously so wrong with this understanding?

 

[tryingbest]

this is great. I had a great period of seven months almost two years ago, and since then haven't really made progress past a few weeks. I just relapsed two days in a row. I am staying up too late and the boredom eventually leads me down this path. I think exercising daily has helped me lots as well.

 

[Weiiiirda !]

No, I think you're misinterpreting my post.

I know porn is a waste of time, I know porn has no benefits. What I'm saying is that just calling it a waste of time is downplaying the effect it can have on the user. It's not only a waste of time, it can cause genuine health problems. So when you say quitting won't fix your anxiety or it won't fix this or that, I don't agree. I do think that for many here they have abused PMO to the point where it is causing, or at least exasperating, a lot of the issues and symptoms they are struggling with.

Porn isn't always useless. In our cases where it's ruining our lives, yes, it has become useless and an acticity we need to quit in order to do regain what we have lost in the process.

Having a black or white thought process isn't going to help, in my opinion. I believe there are cases where porn can help an individual / couple, in reasonable and comprehensive consumption.

And what if it had been useful ? To cope with feelings you were never prepared to face, for example. Maybye without it you would have gone off in more destructive behaviours (More destructive is relative though....)?

Not to dimish the loneliness, guilt, and hardships that comes with porn addiction. You have to isolate your case from others in order to understand it better.

So yes, you are right ; but in some cases, wrong. Keep that in mind and i think your journey's gonna become just a tiny bit easier ! And a tiny bit is mountains sometimes.