Finally I can come out of the shadows and give something back to anybody that is struggling with recovering from PIED. I’ll start with a bit of history about myself. I’m 29 years old and have struggled with PIED since my first sexual experience aged 19. I used to watch porn on an almost daily basis from the age of 13/14 to the day that I heard about the NoFap community (15+ years!).
When I started using porn it was magazines and videos, it wasn’t until my early 20’s I started using high speed internet to watch a constantly updated, seemingly endless supply of porn. By this time the damage had been done.
Throughout the 10 years from my first failed attempt I had various degrees of success in the bedroom. I never found myself a girlfriend so all of my attempts at sex were impromptu one night stands which 90% of ended in soul crushing disappointment for me, and her for that matter. The 10% which wasn’t soul crushingly disappointing I found completely unsatisfying as I would be imagining my favourite scene and not enjoying the beautiful girl laid in front of me. I found the lack of emotional connection I had very confusing.
For 10 years, everyday, I would be thinking and questioning what was wrong with me. When I was 20 I went to see my GP and he ran some tests, everything came back normal so he put it down to performance anxiety. He advised me to talk to the girl to put myself at ease. Unfortunately I never got close enough, or had a girl hang around long enough for me to open up to. I was well and truly on my own with this one.
I knew in my head there was something wrong, I lacked quite a few of the personality traits that I admired in my male peers. I never had much get up and go, I was quite happy standing in line and waiting for my turn and was fine with being Mr average. I lacked the animalistic instinct to chase after girls and if I ever did have it it certainly wasn’t there through the majority of my 20’s. I also noticed that as I got older my libido was disappearing, I stopped getting morning wood and would never get random erections. Without knowing the damage porn was causing I put it down to me getting older, and of course, carried on using porn on a daily basis.
I considered my porn use to be fairly ‘normal’. My tastes never developed into anything that I’m embarrassed about, just lesbian or hetero sex. I was killing between 30 and 60 mins a day on it and would always be deeply unsatisfied as soon as I had finished. But still, I never questioned if porn was the culprit. When using it I used to think I was training for the main event, if only I had known that with every stroke I was destroying my sexual ability with a real girl!
It wasn’t until a couple months after my 29th birthday and after nearly 4 years of no sexual contact with a girl, I found myself back at a girl’s house where I was hoping everything would be fine. I was very drunk which wouldn’t have helped, but after getting upstairs and taking our clothes off I felt nothing. Like absolutely no sexual desire, lust or excitement. My little man showed no signs of life, it was the worst it had ever been and I just wanted the ground to swallow me up. I used the excuse that I had had too many drinks and I’m sure she believed me, but I knew there was something more to it. Waking up the next morning with her I just wanted to leave and get into my own bed and forget anything had happened. I was still broken and if there ever was any light at the end of the tunnel it was well and truly pitch black.
But then, the next day at work, as if someone was trying to tell me something, I was listening to the news on the radio and they were covering a story about how porn is wrecking young men’s sex lives, one bloke in particular who could not get it up at all was the focus of their report. I listened intently and could not wait to get home and Google the subject as much as possible. Within five minutes of getting home I had found the community of men that were literally living parallel lives with me. I was absolutely overwhelmed with emotion, I don’t mind admitting that I cried. The feeling of knowing that I wasn’t the only one was such a relief. I felt a mixture of emotions. I felt regretful for all the missed opportunities that I hadn’t experienced and all the years of questioning who I was, but mainly positive emotions because I knew then I could change my life and almost be reborn. Ive always been extremely positive in the way I deal with things and this has been key to my recovery.
From that day, I vowed never to watch porn ever again. I downloaded an app on my phone to count the days of my abstinence and I started on my journey to make the biggest change my life had ever seen. It started great, I saw some massive changes in my personality, I felt more assertive, more confident and more manly. It was very refreshing and spurred me on.
After 2 weeks I stopped feeling so great. It was when I entered the dreaded flatline. Unlike most, I didn’t have a dead lifeless dick, I just had very few emotions and felt like I was just bumbling along. I still wasn’t tempted to fap as I knew this was going to be one of the many hurdles on my way so I carried on. I can’t lie and say that I went hardmode, I was still edging on an almost daily basis just to give myself some sort of pleasure. This went on for nearly 4 weeks until I gave myself a talking to because I knew deep down it was slowing down my progress. From then I went hardmode, ignored any pictures of girls on social media/tv/films, tried my damnedest to not think any sexual thoughts and most importantly only touch myself to go toilet or wash. For the next 6 weeks I smashed it and in that time my morning wood came back, it felt so good to wake up hard as I knew my brain was fixing itself. I was on the right track!
Then, around day 70 I got really ill with the flu, I was completely down and out and whilst going for a shower on day 74, in a moment of weakness I did it, I relapsed to porn and for 3 or 4 days after I succombed to the chaser affect. Watching it after all that time was a massive rush but it always ended in the same unsatisfying way. I hated myself but I needed to carry on and thats what I did. I didn’t beat myself up for relapsing, it was merely a bump in the road.
I carried on in hardmode for a further 34 days until I relapsed again, don’t ask me why, it just happened. But this time there was no chaser effect which made me think my brain wasn’t craving it anymore, like the addictive pathways in my brain had been broken down enough. It was just a moment of weakness that spurred me on again.
Then on day 123 I met a girl, but this time it was different. I felt more for her in the first 5 seconds than i ever have for any girl ever before. I was instantly attracted to her physically and emotionally and it just compounded the feeling that I had that I was nearly healed. For the next few days we got to know each other and I knew that I was going to have to have the conversation with her. I had spun some white lies about my love life just to save some face and to appear normal but she’s really smart and was picking holes in my stories. At that point I had to come clean and explain everything.
it was so hard find a way to articulate the words that had only ever been in my head but I managed to say everything I needed to. She was incredibly understanding, and made me feel so at ease. It felt like the weight that had been on my shoulders for 10 years had finally been lifted and I was free of it. It was a beautiful moment!! That night we went to bed and I experienced what a meaningful and emotion filled love life could feel like. I experienced successful oral and penetrative sex for the first time without using my imagination and it felt incredible on both a physical and emotional level.
Since then I’ve seen the biggest changes in myself, I feel more confident, concentration levels are up, eye contact is easy now, my shoulders are back, I stand up straight and feel like I can take on the world. I hear lyrics in songs that I know well that I’ve never heard before. My mind is finally clear of all the worries that have clouded my thoughts for the last 10 years and it feels f***ing incredible.
I owe myself a pat on the back but I owe the new girl in my life who is now my girlfriend the biggest thank you. I may never be able to convey to her the gratitude I have for her and how much a life changer she has been because I don’t think I could have done it without her understanding and help. She’s been the final piece in the puzzle that was my life up until day 133!
I am proof that NoFap pays off. The road is bumpy but to feel what I’m feeling now I would do it all again. It truly is special, I feel better than I ever have before and I hope that can be motivation for you. I will be back to check this post for the ne
;