2.5 years ago, when I found out I cannot get an erection despite having a hot naked girl in front of me, I read several posts on this forum, learnt what to do and then just executed on this. I want to write this post to help other people, because I do know how desperate it feels when you find out you have PIED, in particular the question in my mind – “will this ever be fixed and when?”
Where I started
About 2.5 years ago I went to bed with multiple girls and could not get an erection with them, despite them being hot. To cut things short ultimately none of the usual explanations cut it for me. I went to doctor, they found out I have above average levels of testosterone (I was lifting weights 3 times a week, very fit, eating healthy, etc.), except I found this forum and Gary Wilson’s videos on PIED. I wasn’t fully believing it, but I did the PIED test I saw mentioned somewhere: While I could not get erection with girls or masturbating, I tried to watch porn again (I hadn’t for 2 months before) and I got a hard erection very quickly.
So my conclusion was that while I am still not sure about PIED, best course of action was to assume that’s what it is and follow the recommended solution – the reboot.
What I did
I followed what I sometimes saw here called as “full reboot”:
- No porn, not even naked girls, no pictures of cleavage, stuff like that, the only situation I would see that would be in real life when I was say in a club
- No masturbation
- At first due to my career I had less time to meet girls, but over time that changed and I had chance to go on dates and sleep with girls. At first, because my confidence was rock-bottom, I used Cialis. I have seen it as not recommended on the forums around here, but honestly if you don’t take much, i.e. take e.g. 5mg at most once or twice a week, not every week, just occasionally, I don’t think it does such a harm.I think it helped me in the sense of enabling me to have sex starting from rock-bottom confidence levels.
- Bearing in mind safety, if you think the girl is safe/hasn’t had sex with too many guys, I think it doesn’t harm to try sex without condom (make sure she takes the pill of course). The reason is that, at least for me, condom makes a huge difference. Having sex with a condom back then made me think “Why is this sex thing supposed to be enjoyable?”. Having sex without condom was completely different. Now I have sex with condom without problems, but still it makes a big difference – it makes me feel much less and many times I can go on forever with it, whereas without it usually I can’t last particularly long.
Where I am now
After 2.5 years I start kissing with a girl and I get rock hard. It doesn’t matter if I am tired, sleepy, whatever, I have 0 problems getting an erection now. I never thought this would be possible but it is. I might be about to fall asleep but if I hug my girlfriend sometimes I still get an erection involuntarily.
What you have to do is quit porn and masturbation, no exception. It might be hard (somehow the porn bit wasn’t too hard for me), but it is possible – it’s a question of discipline!
therealgilgalad asked: ↑
1) How old are you? Can you tell us a bit about your porn use history…
2) How long did it take you to be 100% cured, or do you consider yourself 100% cured?
3) Are you able to perform multiple times a day?
1) I am 28 now – so I started when I was 25. As for the porn use history, I never did as much as I’ve read in cases where people watch it multiple times a day – I would watch it once a day maybe 5 times a week, for like 20-30 minutes. But this was mostly that vast majority of normal porn wouldn’t turn me on towards the end, I literally wouldn’t care about sex. So initially I had no problem not watch porn. Now it’s different – I really have to be disciplined and it’s hard, but the desperation I went through, and the confidence I have about being able to have erection so easily due to not having watched porn or masturbated, really keeps me going.
2) Now I feel definitely cured, I can get erection any time I start even touching my girlfriend.
3) Re multiple times a day I am – in fact now I am away from my girlfriend and when she visits then we have sex normally every morning and evening several days in a row. I wanted to test multiple times at night but honestly due to work after the first time I am really tired.
LINK – From total desperation to perfect erection
by behemoth
INITIAL POST – 30 MONTHS EARLIER:
OK I am going to try to keep it short, I just tried to include at least in a cursory way most things that are relevant.
I am 25 and basically up to like a couple of months ago I had never had sex before, mostly because I was always very career-focused and sexual urges were just annoyances to get sorted out quickly so I can go back to work. Over the last year I changed job back to something more normal to get my life back again.
When I was about to have sex for the first time 3 months ago I didn’t get the erection. At the time I had been taking Sertralin/Zoloft for a couple of months, plus I had a bit of wine, so I put it to that. The thing is, in later attempts over the following three months, I have taken out all the possible external culprits (SSRIs, since I don’t really need them anymore, alcohol, …), and without Viagra/Cialis I would not get an erection good enough for penetration except once.
I went to the doc, they checked my blood, sad all was OK, including my testosterone levels, and gave me some Cialis on the assumption it’s probably just performance anxiety and those pills will help me overcome it.
Well the thing is I doubt it’s just performance anxiety because having a more detailed think about it I don’t really get (erection-wise) aroused in most situations that guys (including me when I was 17-19) would normally get aroused.
And it takes me like 10 minutes of masturbating to get my goods reasonably hard when alone, and it’s almost impossible to get off without imagining either a scene from porn (up to 3 months ago) or one of the very few and short successful experiences I’ve had with one of the girls I’ve been with (either the short times inside them or just the things we did & their bodies).
So I figured it got to be porn-induced and hence how I end up here. I was watching porn from maybe when I was about 17, but not with the heavy frequency many people describe, and definitely not addicted. Most of the times I would watch it maybe 6 to 7 times a month, and to be honest, another 10 times a month I’d masturbate imagining the scenes I saw (gave me less guilt & saved time).
My question/worry is – do you think my problems with getting an erection are actually porn-induced? I am really not sure because when I read most posts on this forum, as well as most stories on yourbrainonporn.com, people typically mention they masturbate to porn at least once a day, if not more, and after like 3 or 4 days of no porn and no-fap they feel really strong urge to relapse that they have to fight.
I am not at all like that. In the year up to 3 months ago I was watching porn less and less, maybe 2 or 3 times a month at most. 3 months ago after I had my first attempt at real sex I cut the porn off completely, including masturbation to mental images from porn (and up to now I have been masturbating maybe once or twice a week – sometimes still to the mental images from porn, but over time less and less as I replaced them with images of the real girls I’ve been with).
So now my plan is not to watch any porn ever again and in the next 2 to 3 months no masturbation either. But I really can’t identify myself with the stories most people write which include such strong urges to watch porn or at least masturbate after like a day or two. I haven’t seen porn for 3 months, don’t feel the need to see it, and haven’t masturbated by now for a week and only feel a very slight urge to do it, no big raging thing…
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