I think it’s about time I do one of these. I never thought I would. This will probably be long and hard to read, I’m not a great writer so forgive me. If you want more details you can check out my journal https://yourbrainrebalanced.com/forum/index.php?threads/recovering-from-severe-pied.116477/
Most guys are lucky when they find out they have PIED, they get with a girl and it doesn’t work. I found out when porn stopped working for me. I was a full blown severe case. I had actually watched Gary’s TED talk a little before it happened to me, I remember laughing and not believing in it at all. It took a doctor visit and a few months for me to see how wrong I was. I discovered YBOP around 2013 and from there my shitty depressing journey started.
From the very start I tried just giving up porn for 90 days and kept masturbating. I was masturbating with a semi flaccid dick and ejaculating very quickly, it was not at all satisfying. Just giving up porn didn’t seem to be working for me. I noticed giving up both masturbation and orgasm for a few weeks resulted in much better erections, though I would still feel libido less and flatlined after an orgasm.
For years I kept trying to beat my record of abstinence, only ever reaching 30 or 40 days, crying after masturbating because it felt like all my progress had gone after an orgasm. I thought all I had to do was get to 90 days hard mode and all of this would be gone. This became a really shitty cycle that went on for years. It took meeting a girl to help me get to 50 days of abstinence. Sex, if you can even call it that was still pretty much impossible, even after 50 days of hard mode I still could barely get an erection and would orgasm in seconds. She left me and honestly I wanted her to because I still thought all I had to do was just reach 90 days of abstinence.
So then I did just that, I got to 84 days of complete abstinence hard mode, and it felt like I had made the most progress ever. I was getting full 100% erections everyday, I felt cured. All it took was one orgasm and I was right back at the bottom, flatline. This was probably my worst point in my journey, I had heavy thoughts of suicide, and I was obsessing over the idea that wet dreams were the reason I was never making progress (they weren’t). I would repeat the cycle of getting to 30 days hard mode and relapsing.
At that point I relapsed to porn, I still couldn’t even get a full erection for porn at that time, I remember crying again and saying to myself “why the fuck am I still doing this if it doesn’t even make me feel good?” I said fuck it, to hell with PMO. So I tried to make a new life, I got a new job and pretty much pretended my dick didn’t exist. I think I had the most fun in my life around this time, I was doing my art, my job was great. I was able to reach 180 days of abstinence, full hard mode. I had felt fairly cured after breaking my streak of 180 days, it still wasn’t perfect. I would masturbate once after every two to four weeks, when I felt like I could. And yet I still wasn’t getting the erections I wanted and would still orgasm too quickly.
For months this went on and I had another “fuck it” moment, I went 217 days of hard mode! Surely I should have been cured then? I relapsed to porn after that streak and I still could barely get an erection to it! Wtf was going on?
I gave up. Longer streaks of hard mode weren’t getting me where I wanted to be, I couldn’t keep doing it. So I started dating a girl and what do you know, it works. I read recovery stories where the guys said they couldn’t get aroused by their own hand but could have sex, it didn’t make any sense to me but it absolutely does now. Sex is completely different from masturbation and porn, so different. As I see it now, erections are only meant for sex.
My thoughts on hard mode and rewiring are very different now. I used to be a heavy advocate for hard mode being the only way to recover. But now my answer is “I don’t know.” Did I have to go 217 days of abstinence for me to get to where I’m at now or did I just have to rewire? Was it the 2 years of roughly no porn? I don’t know.
I will add that I am not where I used to be before I had PIED, I can’t have sex every day. Too many orgasms will leave me feeling flatlined for 4 to 5 days. I might only get a waking erection maybe once a week. I will use viagra to help with the second round, but I don’t need it for the first round and haven’t used it in a month now. I’ll admit I do peek at softcore stuff I stumble on randomly on the internet but haven’t seen or searched for any real hardcore videos in over 2 years now. I have sex 1-2 times a week now and I’m more than happy with where I’m at now.
My best advice would be do what you feel works for you, but your number one rule should always be no porn, you have to accept that. I’ve seen several accounts of guys curing their PIED by just giving up porn alone. If orgasms send you into flatlines then try going long periods without them, it can’t hurt. But don’t get stuck in the cycle of trying to abstain until you are “cured”. Progress is so nonlinear I don’t think there is a point where you really truly know you are fully cured. For the longest I thought cured meant having multiple spontaneous erections a day and morning wood everyday, that didn’t happen to me and even when it did, one orgasm would shoot me down. Morning wood, spontaneous erections, and erections from visual stimulation mean absolutely nothing.
I hate PIED but it did teach me humility, empathy and compassion. Thank you Gary for all that you’ve done, you saved my life. I’ve been on these forums for a long time and I’ll never leave them, if anyone has questions I’ll try my best to answer them.
-Guts
LINK – 8 Years of severe PIED gone
By – Guts
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