Here’s my story.
Learned about fapping early in high school, and got addicted quickly. Until I was around 17, I couldn’t go a day without PMO. It was all I thought about, almost all of the time. I had absolutely no confidence. It got to the point where couldn’t even look a girl in the eyes for more than a few seconds. I was absolutely miserable.
The summer after my junior year, I quit watching porn cold turkey for religious and moral reasons. But even that wasn’t enough. My imagination would run a bit too wild if I let my guard down. Confidence was slightly better, but fapping still controlled my life.
I spent most of my senior year of high school, as well as 3/4 of my first year of college debating with myself whether beating the one-eyed bishop was a sin or not, since I still adhere to my religious background. The only reason this debate lasted as long as it did was because I didn’t see any Scripture that was explicitly against it. I was absolutely blind to the fact that fapping was a huge problem in my life.
Eventually, that debate did come to an end. A week or so before I turned 19, a thought popped in to my head. How long was I going to keep fapping? Until I’m 25? 30? As much as I was engrossed by it, I still recognized fapping as something I didn’t want to keep doing forever. At that point, I didn’t care if it was a sin or not, I just wanted to drop the habit.
This was around the time that I learned about /r/NoFap. I had heard of people doing NoFap months from when I went on 4chan a lot. Never took it seriously, though. After reading through some of the posts here, I decided to join in the challenge. I could tell that it was working because of that testosterone spike after a week in, since the quality of speeches I had to give for a class went from terrible to awesome, then back down again. The first month or so was the hardest. It felt natural to fap. Got past it through meditation and prayer. I thought that if I got to Day 90, I could start fapping once a week. When I did get there, that attitude changed. I just didn’t want to fap anymore. I grew apathetic towards it. Sure, I blue-balled a lot, but I saw it as a victory. Every blue-ball was a sign that I was taking back control of my life.
So here I am now, 180 days in. I leave you with this passage from Galatians 6, which has been a great motivator for me on my journey. I know that a good portion of Reddit doesn’t share my beliefs, but please just take it as it is:
A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
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