Today marks 90 days of being free from PMO for me. I never thought I would have gotten to this point but I am really pleased to be here. Its been a crazy, hard road to walk already but I have alot more distance to cover.
I’ll go into some detail of PMO history and how its all come to this. I am 23 years old as of a month ago. I was first exposed to porn around age 12-13 at the same time i learned about jerking off. From age 12-13 or 14 i would mostly just jerk off to my fantasy in my head and occasionally some pictures of girls in like lingerie. By the time I was about 14 or 15 I started watching porn on the porn tube sites. Its hard to remember all the details but around this time masturbation had become a daily habit (sometimes up to like 4 times a day, sometimes miss a few days), not always with porn still but if i was ever alone it was gonna be while watching porn. My porn choices never got extreme or fucked up, usually just vanilla average porn for 15 minutes a session.
I grew up in a household where sex was a pretty taboo topic as well as dating at my age (15) where my parents encouraged me to mostly just be friends with girls. So naturally i just used porn as my sexual outlet and didnt bother to much for dating because i felt it was awkward with my parents. I rationalized my porn use because atleast i wasnt having sex, and everyone else i knew also watched porn. This continued for years, 15 til i was almost 23. I had my first “girlfriend” when i was 17 and I remember we planned on having sex and I even bought a variety pack of condoms for us haha. However we broke up before that actually happened. Continue porn use while only having short flings with girls that I’d typically get tired of or once i got to know them see their flaws and get turned off. I attribute alot of that to porn, as i was seeing ridiculous portrayals of what women were supposed to look like, even though i knew it wasnt realistic it still had an effect. I had one other girlfriend at age 18 that was also short lived, where were gonna have oral but her mom left her little brother over to cock block and told him not to leave us alone haha. We broke up shortly after that. This cycle continued and I can remember my first memory of experiencing PIED. It was summer of 2013, I was with a girl and felt nothing. I didnt consider this a big issue, it was kinda annoying but i just moved on. Same thing happened a couple months later, but once again i just assumed i wasnt into the girl and she wasnt the right one for me to lose my virginity to. And i didnt regret that, I had porn after all for my sexual needs and once i met the right girl i would quit and life would be normal. Now at this time i wasnt even aware of PIED either. I continued to have these flings with girls over the next 2 – 3 years and i still never would get aroused but having porn i still just didnt think to hard about it and even if i did, what could i do? I can’t go to the doctor, my parents would find out!
I in hindsight, I threw away in a sense, so many opportunities to have sex with all different kinds of girls over these 4 years, I never would let them in my pants, instead we would just make out, cuddle, and I would get them off by fingering. I always would just makes excuses like “Im waiting for the right person” ( which was true until i turned like 21, by then i was just like i need to get laid already), or “I just went thru a break up and im not ready for this right now”. There was always an excuse for me. I also didnt pursue any real relationships during this time because i knew i wasnt getting sexually aroused and capable so what was the point? I can remember being on my computer senior year of high school, and getting a text from this really good looking girl i had snagged at the winter formal and been talking to and hanging out the past few months and she wanted to hang out and i just read it and threw it on the couch and watched porn/ played video games instead.
It had first learned of nofap probably 2 or 3 years ago, but still didnt hear of Porn Induced Erectile Dysfucntion. To me this sub reddit was just a bunch of awkward kids who couldnt talk to girls and thought quitting porn would change their lives and make them a girl magnet or something. I had tried a streak of no fap in fall of 2014 but relasped after about a month. However last summer of 2015 i finally heard about PIED but i wasnt convinced it was me, or that it was hard to beat in the first place. I decided to try to go on a streak and made it 25 days. I ended up relapsing again. It was around winter of 2014/2015 that i noticed my erection quality wasn’t as good as it once was with porn. It got progressively worse over time when i even was like 60 percent hard when i would come to porn. That is incredibly bad, and shows how seriously my PIED had gotten. This seemed odd but i thought i was probably just over doing it, yet i still didn’t stop. This cycle continued through this last winter of 2015/2016 when i moved out of state and was exposed to an even greater amount of sexual partners that I also had to turn away from due to my PIED. By this time it was driving me fucking mad i couldnt get hard for real women. Im 22 years old and still a virgin! I need to get this out of the way, im getting old! It was finally in march of this year that I finally fucking figured it out. I read a little more on PIED and it all made sense now. This is my problem!
I heard it takes 90 days to recover, and well that seems like a huge challenge, Can i even do this? But in the grand scope of things 3 months isnt shit, certainly i can quit porn to regain my sexual function right? Gave it one or two half ass attempts and always relapsed. Moved back to my home state in April, went on a vacation for a week or so and found myself back at my parents house coming into May. I did alot of soul searching and thinking about my life. One day i realized i hadnt watched porn for a good 3 days and felt like it was a good time to start quitting. Although this time it was different. I did a huge amount of research and reading about PIED and the effects of porn on our brains and came away absolutely mind blown about the damage i had caused. I remember reading stuff specifically out of Noah Church’s book about PIED and addiction/compulsion whatever for internet porn called “Wacked” and literally speaking out loud “Oh my god, this is fucking crazy, this is exactly me”. My whole view on porn had changed. If i dont quit porn for good, I will never be in a real, normal, fulfilling relationship. It was absolutely terrifying but at the same time i felt a weight off my shoulders. I knew what had to be done, I had to quit, for good. My mind was set, I will never watch porn again.
Thats been the biggest change for me for making it this far and for months and years to come. The need for a whole change of view point on it and deciding I do not ever wish to have this in my life again. Porn will fuck you up, in some ways or another. Not always sexual dysfunction but in some small insidious ways.
I honestly can’t say I’ve experienced to many super powers during this time. I’ve yet to regain morning wood/ spontaneous erections that have been absent for atleast 2 years for the most part. I’ve been through a couple flatlines which were absolute hell for me. I notice my penis is alot bigger most of the time now than when i was fapping. It used to shrivel up to a really small size, now its much better. I have gotten some erections when ive been cuddling, making out with girls over the past 90 days but still only getting to 60 percent hard, but its better than nothing at all which ive experienced. I lost the relationship with the first girl ive legitimately liked and had an actual mental connection with in years because of my inability to get aroused. That shit hurt, this all in the last month happened. I even got so worried about losing her i went to the doctor and got viagra which i took once with her and It didnt really do much for me. Pointing further to this being PIED as boner pills dont help with that.
I should add, I was in a flatline a month or so ago and freaking out about how long my recovery might take and i broke down and called my parents and told them everything about my porn history and my ED from it. They have been really supportive and they are super conservative christian parents who never really even talked about sex to me and sheltered me as a kid. This has been really good for my relationship with them. Im actually going to see a urologist today, just to rule out any actual physical problems but im sure it will come back fine.
Im under the impression my recovery is gonna take ATLEAST another 3 months, if not up to a year in total, maybe longer to keep seeing improvements based on what ive learned and read from others experiences. I really hope to see improvements by thanksgiving/christmas or valentines day at the latest which would be the 9 month mark for me but if it takes longer, so be it. Sorry the post is so long, i just felt its best to go into details! Please feel free to ask me any questions about anything about my journey so far or my history! Keep fighting guys!
TL;DR – Watched porn daily for 9 years, Suffered with PIED for 3. Ruined many chances at sex/ relationships over the years. Made it to 90 days no pmo and have alot more recovering to do.
LINK – PIED recovery progression | My 90 day report.
By Imanalienlol
Hey guys, I’ve had PIED since summer of 2013. Just slowly gotten worse over time where before I quit in May, I couldn’t even get a good erection while watching porn.
I just hit 90 days last week and throughout this time the improvements haven’t been super obvious. My penis is much bigger flaccid than when i was PMO is one of the noticeable things.
I have been thru a couple flatlines which really sucked but are a sign of healing. More vivid dreams. But here’s the best thing yet! I finally got morning wood! I had some Saturday and now i did today as well. I am so encouraged by this. I can’t remember the last time I had morning wood, let alone decent morning wood. If I had “morning wood” in the past year or two it was like the shittiest 40 percent wood, hardly can even call it a morning wood and even then it was so fucking rare, it never happened.
And suddenly here I am, 2 out of 3 days getting morning wood that was actually a pretty good quality erection! I’d say about 80 percent! I know I’m capable of a bigger, harder erection but still, this was totally stood up at attention and hard, including the head. This was hard and full enough for sex too. God I’m so just happy.
I still know I have quite the long road ahead of me to a full recovery, but I’m excited to see the small improvements over time. I didn’t give myself PIED over night, it took years of porn use to get there.
I still expect at the least another 3 months, I’m hoping to be fully if not almost fully recovered by the 9-12 month range. A lot of guys seem to recover a lot quicker than I do, but based on the severity of my symptoms of PIED i expected it to be longer for me than what I see a lot.
Blessings to everyone!
We CAN recover!
UPDATE – From 3 years of severe PIED to recovery! There is hope for everyone going through this!
I have PIED for the past 3 years after PMOing daily for 9 years. I’m 23 years old. Still a virgin due to my inability to get aroused with real women. Even in the last year or so my erections to porn became very weak, hadn’t gotten morning wood in over a year probably. I quit PMO for good on May 13th of this year. I went through some flatlines during the initial 90 days, and it was hell. So much uncertainty about recovery and the timeline, I fully expected myself to need 6-12 months to regain my sexual health.
I started seeing a girl about 45 days into my reboot and had times with her spent cuddling, kissing, rewiring, etc. I couldn’t bring myself to explain why I couldn’t have sex with her, i was afraid she would think it was fucked up or whatever. So I just blamed it on stress. I never was fully honest and it strained the start of getting to know her over the month of July and i eventually just decided to cut contact because I moved to a different town and there just didnt seem to be a point to try for this relationship when I wasn’t capable of having sex. I ran back into her last weekend, and we ended up spending 3 days/nights together in a row with lots more of the rewiring, and we just clicked further. It was clear we both wanted to be together but i realized i needed to come clean about my sexual health and where I am at so I told her if we were gonna be together I wasn’t sure when i would be able to be a sexual partner for her. She understood where i was at and wanted to help me and we started dating officially.
I never would let girls touch my dick out of embarrassment of it being soft, but last night we decided to try sex and see what happens. I never expected to get hard this faster in the recovery process, but I did. I had 90 percent erection and was able to have sex with her. I believe the rewiring played a huge roll in this. I didn’t get a boner the whole time rebooting until after day 90 when i got pretty good morning wood 2/3 days in that week. Guys I had some of the worst PIED that I had read about in comparison to others. This just goes to show that we CAN recover. Never lose hope, you need to decide and have a fundamental change of view point on porn that you do not wish to have it in your life ever again and that’s what made the difference for me. So to all you guys out there in similar situations, just keep trucking and don’t hesitate to try to cultivate relationships with a woman even if you don’t think you’d be able to have sex for some time. You may surprise yourselves, and the rewiring is KEY for people who never has had sex before.
8 months free from PMO and then
I went from may of last year to february of this year free of PMO. Lost virginity, got in a relationship, dramatically improved PIED. I thought i had conquered the PMO addiction. I was wrong. Small triggers over time lead to my full collapse. Starting from little shit like girls on instagram, eventually made it back to porn vids. Since feb ive probably relapsed about 20 times. Unacceptable.. Time to hold myself accountable again.
So i was about 100 days in when i finally had sex. And although its not totally perfect, my dick still isnt always as hard as it should be i still have a good sex life and my girlfriend doesnt notice a difference. But fuck, i want to be totally healed and my relaspses havent helped, but its not really made a negative difference either versus what i have noticed but if it keeps up it certaintly will get worse. I was so confident in myself and that my pmo history was behind me and under controll. you absolutely cannot let your guard down. Its something ill always have to stay strong about. Rededicating myself today.
im 23, and for like 3 years or so everytime i was with a girl, even just foreplay before sex i wouldnt get hard at all. Even in my last year of watching porn my erections were getting shittier and shittier quality, and got to the point were i was fapping with a semi flaccid dick. like 50 percent hard. it was fucked.
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