So To begin I started masturbating at around the age of 12 and I’m 19 now. When I started it was just pictures but then of course I discovered porn and took advantage of high speed internet porn which I now can see is just terrible. The past year was its worse since I decided to do online college because of being more affordable. I was probably doing it 6-8 Times a week. Something I am not proud of. I began suffering with erectile problems last year and was also suffering from depression.
I didn’t understand why I was having these problems at 19. I decided to check my Testosterone levels in March 2017 and got a score of 320 total Testosterone and 14 out of free Testosterone. For anyone who doesn’t know, free Testosterone is generally more important because that is what your body is able to use. Still my results were considered normal but were on the lower side. So I decided to basically change my life and do everything I could to raise them naturally and hopefully help my erectile problems.
I’ve been blessed my whole life with incredible will power to stop things. It’s never been hard for me, but nofap was definitely an exception. I never considered myself addicted to porn until I stopped using it. To this day, I have been able to stop porn and haven’t looked at any porn in 110 days. I truly don’t want to ever go back and look at it. Around day 80 I masturbated without porn for the first time and I felt great. I was just so surprised I was able to get it up without porn. I also did the same thing around Day 100.
Let’s talk about all the pros about nofap.
- ERECTILE PROBLEM SOLVED. Nofap for the most part helped me solve my erectile problems. Before doing it I wasn’t having any morning wood. Within a couple of weeks it was back. Then later on I could get an erection by just thinking.
- SLEEP. It greatly helped my sleep schedule. I’ve been in online college for the past year and my sleep cycle was all out of whack. I’d usually stay up late and get distracted by high speed internet porn for hours which destroyed my sleep cycle.
- CONFIDENCE. Another positive is I did experience not so much a boost of confidence but really a feeling of not caring what others think. Whenever I was around people, I believed I became more social
- LOVE FOR MUSIC. I’ve played music my whole life and play bar shows 2-3 times a week. The past year of playing music, I’ve been just doing it for the money. However, stopping porn allowed me to recreate my love for music and playing instruments
- TESTOSTERONE LEVELS. I had a blood test a couple of days ago after 3 months of nofap, better diet, better sleep, and more exercising. My total T Level rose to 582 and my free T actually doubled to 29. Which is actually too high out of the normal range haha. I’m not sure if nofap helped my T levels but all my lifestyle changes including nofap boosted my T levels in a short time of 3 months.
Now let’s talk about the cons of nofap
- STRESS. By nature I have a lot of stress and anxiety. However, I used porn and masturbating to relax myself. Without that I became the most stressed and paranoid in my entire life. I didn’t know how to handle it and I started having actual panic attacks.
- DEPRESSION. I do not understand how nofap helped some people’s depression. I had moderate depression before I started but I experienced the worst depression of my entire life. I was border line suicidal which scared me because I never felt like that before.
- WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS. A few weeks after stopping porn I began to develop 2 very odd withdrawal symptoms. I looked into these symptoms and they are actually both a symptom of way too much anxiety and stress which nofap was causing me to experience. The first withdrawal symptom was hair loss. Before nofap, I had the most thick hair of any person I knew. After starting nofap and stressing out almost every day my hair started shedding much more than usual and does not have the same thickness as before. I really hope it corrects itself but I’ve just recently been not stressing out so much so time will tell. Another withdrawal symptom I began to have was whenever I got stressed I began to feel a lump in my throat. This of course scared me even more and it still comes on when I feel stressed
I wanted to give some advice to help anyone starting on nofap.
- WORKOUT. Really takes the mind off of things and is a great stress reliever
- SLEEP. Aim for 8 hours of sleep to control stress
- STAY AWAY FROM CERTAIN MOVIES AND TV SHOWS. Really try to avoid certain movies and TV shows with sex scenes. For Example, I love game of thrones and am certainly watching the new season but that show has a lot of sex scenes that can be stimulating. I instead actually relived some of my childhood and watched some 90s cartoons like Batman The Animated Series and Justice League and those shows actually kickass and keep my mind off of watching more shows with erotic scenes.
To finish it off, at this point I’m actually not sure I’m glad I started nofap. I know that is not what a lot of people want to hear but it has caused me a lot of bad side effects that I hope go away soon. I still suffer from depression and my stress has been a little bit better but it’s still there more present than before. I could just be in a really long flatline but I don’t think so.
The main thing I want to tell people thinking about starting nofap is to know that it is no joke. Nofap is very hard to do for a long time and you have to be prepared for some of the withdraws. To this day I’ve decided to never go back to porn but I will masturbate occasionally since I can now control it and not over do it like I used to. The main thing with nofap is simply control.
P.S.
Also a little side note. For anyone in my younger age range, I highly recommend getting Testosterone levels checked. Most doctors don’t check or think it’s an issue while being so young. However, testosterone levels have dropped considerably over the last few years and that could be a big cause of your problems without you even knowing. I’d be happy to help anyone with raising them naturally.
by Gjh125
by Gjh125
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