I have not made a lot of active contributions to NoFap, but coming on this forum and reading the posts did help me a lot personally, so I feel I owe this 90 days report to you guys. It is also some background on my issues, I apologize if this turns out to be rather long.
I started PMO in my first or second year of high school, I would have been around 12 at the time. I am 23 now, so that is a solid 10 years of PMO. Even though I was not a heavy user in terms of multiple times a day, most days I would PMO before sleeping and when I was bored I would do it more often.
I’ve always had some issues and have been in and out depression for a good number of years now. For some reason I have never quite been happy, even though I did sort of enjoy my time in high school. I just seemed indifferent to most things. One of the things I have going for me is that I am quite good at studying, which led me to study for a degree at a top university which I recently (last week) finished with good results, even though I wasted a lot of time on PMO. This however did not give me the sense of achievement and joy it brought to most of my classmates.
Confidence has always been a big issue for me. I never felt I really fit in and never really felt comfortable in groups of people or talking to strangers. I liked girls (and still do), was very attracted to some in my environment but was never confident enough to talk to them, I have never been on a date nor had a first kiss.
I always felt that PMO, which I knew would not solve my problems, would help me at least cope with them. Even though it felt wrong and did not make me feel better I somehow convinced myself I needed. It was a way to ‘medicate’ myself and numb me from the problems that I had (mostly in my mind). I always thought I would just stop when I would have had my life figured out. I could not have been more wrong.
For more or less the past two years I have been trying to stop. Sometimes I would go for a few weeks, but mostly for just a few days and never made any significant progress and ended up in my old patterns. Until I found NoFap. I am not exactly sure how I found this sub, I had actually never used reddit before. I guess I read it somewhere and it stuck with me until I got curious and googled it, read some posts and decided to give it a try.
At the time I started I was studying for exams and was generally in a very dark place in terms of depression. At that point in time I did not really want to do anything so, this might surprise some of you, my first few weeks were remarkably easy for me. It started to get tougher after a few weeks, with this sub really helping me to find motivation to combat the urges. It also made he realize that PMO could be the source of others problems I would never have thought of.
With regards to the superpowers, I do not think they really appeared for me. I have gained a bit of confidence, but am still extremely unconfident when it comes to girls. I must say my outlook on life has improved quite a bit and I feel more optimistic about my future. One of the most amazing (and unexpected) benefits I noticed is that I started to dream again! I find this very awesome and the thought of this has even prevented me from relapsing a few times.
For me 90 days will be only the start, I plan on continuing my streak forever. I do not remembering ever really gaining anything from PMO, but I do realize now that it robbed me of the joy in life and the simple things. While NoFap, at least for me, is no magic potion it did help me turn my mood and outlook on life for the better, for which I am very thankful. This would not have been possible without all the wonderful posts on this forum, thank you!
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