I intend to write this as perhaps a sobering assessment of what nofap has been to me. I never experienced any of the ‘superpowers’ that others did, and I didn’t really believe in them or expect them or want them. For me, nofap has been all about a return to normality.
Restoring, essentially, the chemical imbalance in my head that has led to a distorted and perverted perception of women, social anxiety and overall lack of motivation.
And it has done just that. In fact, the biggest and most real affection I’ve noticed from nofap is that I enjoy life. I actually take pleasure in doing things like sports and social activities, whereas previously porn would simply sap my motivation to do any of it. This is the most important result, I believe, of nofap because once you have the motivation to do things in life everything else falls into place. From this you can get your superpowers, your life’s direction, your introspective self-improvement – whichever particular carrot appeals to you. At its most basic level, nofap gives your life back to you from the clutches of a will-sapping addiction.
For me, getting to 90 days required a change in thinking, a different approach. I’ve been attempting and failing at nofap for 2 years now. The entire time I saw it as a struggle – an eternal and daily battle against a hideous monster inside me that hungered for sinful satisfaction. I kept confronting it on its own level – submitting to its tug-of-war game, and this was the fundamental problem.
I tried to escape. I travelled overseas, adventured, studied a language, tried new experiences, even got involved with a celibate religion. None of it helped, until finally I found a partner and engaged in that act which I’d been emulating for nearly a decade but never actually done. Somehow that changed everything for me. I tried returning to porn, but from that point onwards I saw it for what it really was – emulating an intensely personal act against pictures flashing across a screen. I truly saw myself for the first time and realized I didn’t want to be this anymore. I refused to fight the demon, and finally realized that the demon didn’t actually exist. It was a conjuration of my subconscious self trying to justify the struggle against this addiction and trying to justify failure.
Upon this point, I reigned in the addiction as if it were simply another aspect of myself that I regulate and control. I no longer see it as a daily struggle. I simply don’t do it. The thoughts still enter my mind and it’s indeed impossible to avoid stimulation in today’s sexualized society. But the difference now is that I do not allow the consideration of masturbating to reach a level of seriousness. It remains perpetually in a region of my mind where I hypothetically consider such things as rape and suicide – things that have no communication with the action part of my brain.
For all of you determined men out there who are battling the demon inside of you, I hope my insights have given something to you and I do apologize for the length of it. I can’t recommend much except that you attempt to learn to see sex as something more than just the physical rush, because I firmly believe that the problem we now face is closely related to our perception of it.
LINK – 90 day check in – a sobering assessment
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