I’m 18 years old now, and I’ve been doing Nofap for about a year. Held multiple ~3 month streaks but with the summer holiday it sort of broke down and since then I’ve only gone things between a few days to two weeks without PMO. It basically got re-normalised in my brain, an error I’m here to repair.
Throughout my childhood/teenage years I was bullied and isolated like hell in school, and wasted too many of my days playing video games and jerking off. Over the years I grew depressed to the point of honestly believing humanity as a whole had, with very few exceptions, consciously agreed to hate me. It hurts to think of even now, but I considered ending it all some times. Never had a girlfriend or anything remotely like it, barely had any social interactions at all either. Aside from you Nofappers, I’ve told only my single most trusted friend as much as a word about how bad it was. Even though I guess my parents perfectly understood it and knew an 11-year old breaking down and yelling how they wish they were never born once in a while isn’t normal.
When I was smaller, before this happened, I recall drawing and making little sculptures all the time. Coming late to dinner because I was completely sucked into an amazing novel. Or busy constructing marvelous worlds in Lego bricks. Later on, I came late because I was stuck to a fucking computer screen.
It kept getting worse until a savage fighting mentality grew and a decisive goodbye to PMO and my self-destructive mindset helped me get on track. It’s still a fight staying afloat, but now I’m taking the onslaught of emotions standing tall, not covering in a corner. Over the last year and a half, I’ve started drawing and writing stories again. Playing a couple of musical instruments and studying the theory behind it. I have more and healthier friendships than ever, and am finally learning how to love girls too. I’m proud of myself and what I stand for again.
Before, I was utterly petrified of even holding class presentations. I also hated group work, and when they said these two methods would be common in my country’s equivalent of high school, I momentarily considered throwing out my near-straight A’s and taking a craftman’s education instead just so I could be left in peace and get away from classrooms.
But my how has that changed. Now, I join as many voluntary theatre classes as possible and enjoy being on a stage. When I’m done writing this, I’m taking my banjo to an improvisational jam with people I don’t know in front of an audience I don’t know, playing tunes I don’t know, and I’m mainly just excited about the thought.
Each time I’ve gone to Nofap before this, I used the Tor browser because I didn’t like the thought of my ISP knowing this was a problem for me. As I mainly used Tor for porn I’ve long since deleted that, but the worst part is my PMO’d brain sometimes just rationalised watching it without that level of anonymity, in a regular browser
So here, ISP, if you can take the messed up shit I’ve fapped to, you can take this too. By the way, this is the end. There’s none more of that crap coming.
A part of me felt like relapsing just before, but instead I came here, read a few posts on the frontpage, and now I’m here finishing this message off with watered eyes because I damn love the lot of you for sticking together and helping each other make it.
Over and out,
a returning Fapstronaut
EDIT: To add to the ever-growing list of motivational Nofap speeches, here’s an interlude from a Crippled Black Phoenix song I quote out loud to myself when the urge to relapse gets bad:
I am not what you say I am. I will not be what you tell me to be.
You stare at me through a prism of delusion, of hatred, of propaganda, and I refuse to see myself in your lies.
You try to turn me into a barroom anecdote, a whispered slur, a vile fairytale to fool the gullible.
But I will not be the mirror for your self-loathing. You use accusations as weapons, scarring me where no blade can pierce.
But I will not plead guilty to your crimes. I will not perform a spastic puppet dance to the lying chorus of your psyche.
And yet… break me enough and you will see. Spread your disease amongst my friends, my family, my loved ones, and you will learn… you will learn what I can be.
And I’ll show you… I’ll show you everything you never wanted to see. And I’ll finally be what you never truly wanted me to be.
;