Unless the report is unique, we no longer add to this page. These are remarks of heavy porn users about the symptoms that caused them to start digging for answers. For longer, detailed stories, see rebooting accounts. Also, recent research shows high rates of cervical and lower back pain in young internet users.
Watch Noah Church’s informative video on symptoms of excessive or overly vigorous masturbation.
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(Age 20) As I get older the more apparent the side effects of this addiction become: less interest in real sex, isolation, weak erections, less pleasurable orgasms…
In my case, it’s been low motivation (I don’t care), always tired, brain-fog, difficulty concentrating, social anxiety, depression, etc… I knew something wasn’t right with me (and close friends & family knew too), but I just couldn’t put my finger on it (or didn’t want to from an addict perspective).
I’ve choked my sausage so heartily throughout the years, it’s taken the shape of an hourglass, (still hasn’t healed.) LINK
I edged hard today, and tried so hard not to carry on with the feeling. Then, due to me hearing someone come to my room, I ejaculated, and before it began, i gripped the top and squeezed so hard to hold the ejaculation in that I ended up making myself bleed. I quickly felt the sharp pain and went into the restroom, seeing nothing but blood and bits of cum out of me. I’m freaked out that that actually happened.
By the time I reached the age of 21, I saw the negative effects of PMO:
*ED — I soon to realize that I wasn’t horny; it was the pixels or the “butterflies in my stomach” that triggered the brain-to-penis connection, forcing an erection. The erection itself would say up, but if I take my mind off of porn or if I “get to work,” my penis turns into a deflating balloon (literally). I have to, sometimes, aggressively get it up via hand, but it doesn’t want too! I try to stop, but it’s like my brain is telling me to keep going, the pmo will “feel good, I promise you.”
*Testicle pain — I guess it’s a result of daily PMO. I’m sexually exhausted, I guess. It’s not a torsion pain, it’s the epididymis (the sides).
*Headaches, sinus pressure — Even though this has been affecting me since 2011 (a few years after I graduated HS), I still don’t know what to make out of it. It only happens if I PMO every day, as opposed to say once every other day. I’m assuming it’s rapid nerve firing in my brain, a chemistry chance of sorts, or I’m focusing too hard on the screen.
*Tough to walk past people — Be it avoiding eye contact, head looks at the ground, or my head “jolts” to a side. I’m assuming it’s anxiety, but I don’t feel panicky. I mainly feel like a ghost or someone drifting without realizing you’re living! People are around you!
*Tough to talk to people — I’m self-conscious and I focus too much on “come on, man, talk, quit being afraid.” So it’s social anxiety of sorts since my heart does race.
Over time my real life perception of women and sex got completely screwed up. It was no longer possible to have one concise view on this matter…due to all the contradicting thoughts in my head! “Women like cuddly sex… no wait, women just want raw hard sex…. no, women want commitment and no sex at all… nonono women just want to project their frustration on us by dressing sexy but being unavailable while they have access to all the sex in the world… women are sexbeasts that demand a penis that is in working order…I must be a porn star in bed. I am a failure!” Something like that. In the end it just wasn’t possible to integrate those views, some of which were each other’s complete opposite. It confused me and depressed me
I got out of a relationship in 2012 and started fapping away my life. I had sex with 4 girls in 2012 though but none in 2013 and 2014. By 2013 I got the worst curse ever… yes the P word. PROSTATITIS. This was caused by two things… urinary infection and over masturbation. It came a point where I was fapping 4 times a day and I was helpless. I went to 3 different doctors, one general practitioner and two urologists. Infection was solved in a quick antibiotics course but the symptoms persisted for more than a year. Doctors told me I couldn’t live a normal life anymore. That I had a “life condition” and I would have to eat a healthy diet, quit alcohol and take medicine forever.
It wasn’t until I decided to cure myself with my mind that I actually started feeling better. All I did was focus on the way I wanted to feel and not my present reality. I would focus on the past, when I was healthy. I would focus on how my dick and balls used to feel before illness. This took me to change things in my life. I gained more control over my fapping addiction by cutting it in half and later to 1 fap a day. FOUR MONTHS LATER I MADE A TOTAL RECOVERY FROM PROSTATITIS. (Something never before documented). https://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/3f2soq/save_your_life_force/
I have had epididymitis for a while. I think it may have been caused by excessive masturbation in a short period of time while having to pee badly.
I have not read any story as bad as mine and this has made me realized how far i have gone in this road. A part of me still feels i shouldn’t be writing this but another part of me is saying what more can i loose infact witting this can only help me get support and expose some more people to the dangers of fapping. This a post from a boy who damaged his body with his own hand. Sad isn’t it? But that is the truth. Right now i have been diagnosed of a kind of prostatitis that requires a medical sugary, the doctor says the chambers holding blood in my penis have also been affected, understanding the diagnosis is another problem. The truth is i just feel like a walking corpse every time i go through the doctors note. This is how i feel about myself and life in general. I’m very scared about all this, i don’t know if my penis can ever be as before, i don’t even have the fee for the surgery yet. The only family i have here is my uncle and he has not been able to raise a quarter of the amount needed after all this time. Its not fair i put him in this situation some times i wonder what he thinks of me, i wont be shocked if he abandons me.
I’m over a month now and I feel so much better. Sometimes when I get into bed at night now, I just remember how tired I was and how much pain I was in when I used to go to sleep after my binges. It brings such a huge smile to my face now, that I can go to bed pain-free. It must seem so pathetic to people who have never experienced this.
Only a few people know about testicle torsion, i wasn’t one of them until may 2014. I was depressed and i was running away from my problems with masturbation. But one day, i cross the line i guess and fapped 9-10 times a day. After that day, i woke up with huge pain in my left testicle. I thought it will go away. It didn’t. I puked, my balls become 4x bigger, and after 12 hours later i went to hospital. They did some test and i learnt it’s “testicle torsion” and i could lose my testicle due to gangrene.
Testicular torsion occurs when the spermatic cord twists, cutting off the testicle’s blood supply. Doctors can save testicle with surgery but if it’s too late, there is no chance. Basically if your testicle is already dead, they can’t do anything. There is no cure for death, yet. And my testicle is dead when i went to hospital. I had a surgery and they removed my dead left testical.
And weirdly i kept fapping. Until last week. Last week, i felt little pain for 2 days, went to hospital, they said it’s not testicle torsion (i already knew that. testicle torsion cause TOO much pain) but they can’t figure out what’s going in my testicle. And i didn’t tell them but i figure it out the cause. I fapped too much that week. I have stopped immediately fapping and i haven’t fapped for 1 week. Pain is gone. I feel better generally, i feel i saved my last testicle. I wish i knew before about harms of masturbation but it’s already happened. But you can save your testicle. And i think if you are doing nofap, this is a motivation. Don’t fap, and save your testicle. Good motivation i guess?
I had just finished year 10 and summer break had begun. You know what that means- Lots of fapping and porn. I literally did NOTHING but that. Oh, yeah, I started working out at that time too, but fapping sapped so much energy out of me I could barely perform in the gym. Aside from that, all that porn had its toll on my brain. I had become almost TOTALLY emotionless. I am serious. This is a hell you do NOT want to go to. Someone could tell me a story of a child being violently raped and I would not feel ANYTHING. I remember sitting down one day, staring at the floor. I don’t know why this memory strikes me so hard, but I was just thinking to myself “I wish I could just fade away into the darkness and stay there, away from everything”. I had lost the ability to feel emotion. I thought it was me just growing up, but I was wrong- it was porn. Porn is a parasite. Now, school started. I was scared of other people. I was terrified of other people. The same guys that I can easily push around now (not that I do…) were terrifying. They actually tried to befriend me (and now we’re all good friends) and I hated them. I don’t know why, but I wished they would die- laughing all the time, actually living life. For some reason I had totally lost my balls. Yup, porn was that reason. Not only that, but my brain had become extremely dull. I had a reputation of being a smart kid from the previous year. Being a small school, all the teachers know who is who so when I went to year 11 apparently all the senior teachers were looking forward to teaching me (they told me this lmao). They were disappointed- my brain was so fogged I could not think at all. I remember in math class I had forgotten basic algebra, and the teacher was like “you were supposed to be smart!”. Was I? I couldn’t remember anything past a week, and I didn’t have the brain power to retain what we learned the day before.
I’m not even 13 years old yet, and I’m pretty much screwed over with porn. I’ll always be hyper-sensitized towards porn, and that saddens me greatly.
Age 17 – I was feeling worse day by day without a reason after 6 months of PMO . Some symptoms were: laziness, lethargy, no energy, tremors, severe anxiety, bad memory, no vitality, low voice. http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/2d609k/90_day_reportlovely_life_being_lovely/
(Male) I went out for drinks with a group of girls and we are very open and often discuss personal stuff and things like sex. At least four of the girls admitted that most of their sexual experiences with guys included guys who could not orgasm, could not get an erection and generally very selfish and uninterested in bedroom. Most of these girls are okay with porn and would not mind if their SO watched it because they are open minded. However I think they are too tolerant. I’m not saying you should break up or yell at your partner but you have every right to get upset and discuss the issue. Many of these girls gave their SO’s too many chances and the guys would lie about their habits. The fact that guys or girls are on this subreddit (NoFap) suggests that you accept the problem exists and not bullshit yourself that it is okay. In 5-10 years time I can guarantee that if people keep consuming porn, we will have massive relationship breakdown, dating will become non existent and there will be massive gender conflict.
I have been addicted to porn for more than 10 years now. Only now that I realized that it had a profound effect on my sexual desire and performance. I’m 31 now. I spent more than one hour almost every night on porn. When I look back, I thought at that time that it was a normal thing, and that I have to kill the desire inside me so I can stop thinking about sex and do the other things that were more important to me. But I now realized that I was so wrong. I wish someone told me about the damage it can cause. The more you spend time, the more you become addicted and your brain desensitized.
Then I would discover something even more damaging, which was fapping on drugs, which allowed me to go even up to 7 hours of non-stop watching porn and jacking off. After these binges I would not only feel like shit from the drug but fapping as well, wasting time and on top of that my dick would swell up like a balloon and I wouldn’t know if I didn’t injure myself seriously. I would hate myself for doing it, I would hate everyone around me for no real reason and then I would do it again, adding even more damage and filling my life with uselessness.
Here is a short list of undesired effects that I had, due to masturbation and porn addiction: – lack of energy
– isolation from the others – lack of desire to interact with other people
– low weight due to fewer and fewer meals
– erection problems
– desensitivity
– decrease pleasure while having sex
– problems keeping a the relation with girlfriend, family and friends
– lack ability to socialize
– less time to do other things
– concentration problems
– lack of interest for life
Watching porn had a very bad effect on me: It made me sweat enormously – it made me a limbic system on two legs with waterfalls pouring out from my armpits. It is hard to explain just how bad it was, painful both physically and psychologically. As I stopped watching porn, however, the problem faded, though over a period of three years with steady improvements. I am writing to you because I have written a short essay with advice for others based on how I got beyond this sweating problem of mine, which underscores that stopping watching porn was the main reason that sweating stopped for me, and it would be cool if you could help people finding that essay by providing a link to it from YBOP. Link to EBook
My social circle took a beating because of my addiction. The effects of porn are really awful – beyond the brain. It also isolates people!
When I started using Internet porn in 7th grade I noticed my concentration drop drastically, also motivation for basketball took a huge hit, as well as my ability to remember things. I noticed my refractory period was not what it should have been when I was 17 and in great physical shape. Looking back I had signs of porn-induced ED (difficult to get erection, delayed ejaculation) around 17/18 years old. When I started using very heavy at age 22 it only took a few months to develop full blown ED.
I am 21 years old, and I feel like I have alot of things to make up for all of these last few mostly unproductive years. To say I become spineless if I indulge in PMO is seriously an understatement. I just become a pathetic excuse for a human being. Too emotional, no confidence, no clarity, can’t think straight. And I seriously have gone YEARS living like this. Now I am controlled, stable, focused, super confident, and have a very sharp mind. And this is only 22 days. When you save your energy up, you get that unconquerable will where what would have been huge walls in your past become little knee-high fences you just have to step over.
I’m a 20-something year old guy and I JUST realized I have an addiction to porn. I’ve been neglecting a lot of relationships as a result of this; I’ve been easily irritated, overly critical, shy and insecure – the list goes on. I actually abstained from porn/masturbation last summer without knowing I actually had a problem on my hands (pun intended) but MAN did I feel a difference! I became more aware, happier, more social, optimistic and stable. My experience was reeking of what I can only describe as a powerful masculinity and inner calmness; it was what life should be. I used to be extremely witty, outgoing, hyperactive and creative. Today (before quitting) I am somewhat insecure, shy, approval seeking, and nowhere near emotionally independent.
When I reduced the level of intensity of what I was viewing (to swimsuit models), my erections lost a LOT strength and I frequently had to ‘death-grip’ it. That’s when I realized I had a problem. I’d never noticed that I needed the higher intensity stuff to keep my body excited.
I got into hardcore M, and it got to a point that I was hurting my genitals. I got obsessed with a kind of bloody M. It got to a point that I lost a lot blood that I almost ended up in the hospital. It was a close call. After that I have been doing “normal” M. But now I am very grateful that I found nofap because I know it will take me out of this hell.
I watched porn for 10 years, (I’m 22) and that gave me ED. Every time I wanted sex with my girlfriend, I simply couldn’t do it… I masturbated every day though, some days even 2 times. It was easy, felt good and at least I was entertained a few minutes, I thought.
This was me:
- My friends were drifting away. I gave up hangouts to sit in my room and pleasure myself
- My family loved me unconditionally, but did not enjoy my company.
- I had trouble focusing on my job and as well as my classes at my university.
- I had no girlfriend.
- I had an enormous amount of anxiety with human interactions in general.
- I worked out furiously, but never seemed to gain anything.
- Everyone told me, I was mentally checked out. I even caught a glimpse of me in a video and you could see a blank stare in my eyes. No one was home. Definition of space cadet.
- No ENERGY, no matter how much I slept, NONE. NOTHING. AT ALL. Always tired. Bags on my eyes, pale, acne, and dehydrated.
- I was terribly depressed.
- I had a PMO addiction.
- I had PMO induced ED.
- I was stressed, anxious, confused, and lost.
- I was not living life, but I was not dead either. I was a zombie.https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/100-days-ed-depressed-anxious-lethargic-lack-focus-zombie
It is unbelievable what these last 10 years of PMO did to my life. It is absolutely unbelievable. I developed depression, social anxiety, 0 friends, lost an amazing girlfriend whom I was with for almost 4 years, school/job, everything was, and still is, upside down.
In the past year I have been having ED problems. I have also been increasing my Internet porn usage dramatically. To the point where I have it on all day, and do not even masturbate much. I just watch it now. I have become almost totally desensitized to sexual stimuli and it is affecting my reality performances with women.
Porn has become so accepted into our society, that it’s become strange not to watch porn. It has become associated with manliness and coming of age since every male that has hit puberty now watches porn. I myself thought that it was due to an increased libido that I watched so much porn. Now I know I was wrong. I had an addiction. My social life was a wreck. I barely went out and most certainly didn’t have any female contacts.
If you have them available you should look at old report cards. I know this sounds funny but the other day I decided to check out some old boxes in my parents lower level. I found different report cards and teacher evals from before I started chronically masturbating and after. There was a noticeable difference in both my performance (no pun intended) and in the way my teachers evaluated me. My academics were clearly stronger before I started whacking it several times a day. Yes, it could be a coincidence but I honestly do not think so after noticing how much more productive and focused I am when I lay off for a short while.
(Age 18) A few weeks ago, I was comfortable enough to discuss this entire rebooting process with my closest friends. When I first told them that I hadn’t jacked off to hardcore porn for X amount of days, their jaws literally dropped. I told them about the benefits, withdrawals, etc etc. Then I found out, all 4 of them (All of them are my age) were addicted to PMO. They all admitted that even a few days without porn was too much to bear. I was actually shocked because I would have never really guessed that my buddies were dealing with the same crap that I was dealing with all these years. Similar to me, they started at a young age and watched porn multiple times a week. They had absolutely no idea what porn was doing to them. I said to them “Damn, no wonder we’ve all been single throughout our high school years”. I have to say that this unlimited amount of porn available to us is truly a disease to our generation of males.
Porn use almost ruined my long term marriage and if my wife was not as strong as she is, it would have. I have talked to 4 other men about porn and ALL four admitted to me that they have been using porn and are to the point of using ED medication.
(Age 19) I am a virgin. Last year I kissed the first girl in my life, I tried to have sex with her but failed due to ED. This was immensely embarrassing and confusing, especially to me- someone who thought their sex drive was very high because of the amount of porn I watched. At the time I was masturbating to porn at least twice a day. That’s at least, most times more. I was using a death grip and the fastest pace possible, I was also ejaculating with a soft penis. Most days I would wank so much that by the end of the day when I orgasmed nothing would even come out. Failing to have sex with that girl sent me into a porn spiral, I would literally wake up, roll over and masturbate, masturbate all day, then at night masturbate and go to sleep. 6 times a day or more, no joke. Safe to say my life was an absolute mess, all the bad effects of PMOx 10. I knew that the porn and masturbation was affecting me but I was in denial, masturbation is good for you right? You can’t be addicted to porn.
Although I’ve had episodes of being more excited about looking at porn than spending the night with a girl I’m dating, I’m at least thankful that I haven’t had any significant ED problems in real sex situations. I’m guessing that’s partly due to my having sex many times before getting hooked on high-speed internet porn. I really empathize with the younger guys who started on this stuff from the onset of puberty. It’s kind of like shooting heroin before you’ve even had your first beer.
Now, I look at Miss Universe contestants and there is no hormonal reaction. I could watch the entire swimsuit section and not get an erection. Aesthetically, I know these women are beautiful but it’s such a detached experience. As a 17-year old male this scares the absolute shit out of me.
Our biggest problem as men: I want to masturbate but I can’t find the right scene http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/14mis7/our_biggest_problem_as_men/
I could masturbate 4-5 times a day at my peak. [But] I was feeling all the ill effects that have been reported: lack of interest in other activities, fatigue, brain fog, it was crippling. I even had a sleep study done where they wire you up while you sleep in their lab. Tons of blood tests and the doctors had no clue what was causing those effects.
After discovering the website YBOP and realising how it described my position I drummed up the courage to speak to my 17 year old about the dangers of PMO. He seemed to take everything I told him on board. What shocked me was the effects he described on mates of his. In their chats with each other about sex and porn he once mentioned that he had experienced a wet dream some years ago – they all laughed thinking it was strange! He told me that these friends all regularly looked at porn and had never experienced a wet dream, even though they were all over sixteen at the time This just goes to show how porn messes with your natural sexual development. One of his mates who had already had sex said that he actually preferred porn in comparison. As others have noted before me this whole thing is currently wreaking havoc amongst men of all ages and needs far greater exposure. The UK government talk about clamping down on children’s access to porn – if they were to highlight the side effects reported here and elsewhere they would have a far stronger case.
This is why i am quitting: I’ve literally run to the washroom (mid-forplay) pulled out my iPod and watched a quick porn video, jerked it a bit, zipped up my pants and run back to my partner because it takes me so long to get an erection without porn.
I used porn to escape from bad emotions coming from having PIED at 13 and urinary problems combined with pain in the groin area due to pelvic floor tension caused by bad masturbating habits.
(Age 22) My own feelings: Too much masturbation using pornography has damaged my body physically and mentally. It was when I was 16 years old the dark circles under my eyes appeared. I’m talking about what people call “raccoon’s eyes” when there is a clear dark circle under the eye. Both of my eyes have the effects. It was also at 16 when I noticed my energy really change for the worse. It just was always high energy and now suddenly it is low energy. My mind became foggy meaning I would forget different things. Leading to me always carrying around a small paper pad with a pen in my pocket. Today, I still have the dark circles under my eyes, as well as: –The fatigue of being tired.–Energy overall is low. –A foggy headed feeling that I will forget what to do. –Only able to have an erection from viewing pornography or thoughts stemming from it. –Actual failure to have an erection when having intercourse. From when I lost my virginity to current day. –Using my orgasm as a “medicine” that will only help me sleep at night. If I don’t do it then I can not sleep to bed. –I call it orgasm headaches when I masturbate that a strong headache will form in my head. It leads to an all day headache from my orgasm. –Stomach knots from orgasm. When I do have an orgasm I can feel my stomach tighten to the point where I don’t want to eat from the pain.
It was only when I realized that porn was an addiction that thought about myself and realized “man, PMO is the reason I get out of bed every morning”. Giving up something like that is not one bit easy. Its almost comical, but you have to re-learn how to interact with people. I felt like I wasn’t human when I was learning this because interaction is human 101. Little kids even know how to do it. I felt like a robot with artificial intelligence. All in all, in my experience, quitting cigs was nothing compared to the addiction of porn, cigs didn’t feel like an addiction. It was just something I did. The ED will stop sooner or later. While i’ve had a few relapses (although no binges) my reboot has taken an entire year. It is only recently that I can say, that I am seeing real progress with ED, and have a desire for real women as opposed to porn.
(Age 25) My tastes in porn had gone from regular softcore lesbian stuff to heavy bondage, electric shock and even rape. I also found myself fapping purely for the sake of it. When I was bored, when I woke up, before I went to sleep, when I was on the toilet – and having constant access to porn on my phone didn’t help.
If I’m unhooked from porn, I find it easy to talk to other people in the office, joke around, talk to the boss (and some of my more attractive female co-workers). If I’ve fapped recently I’ll want to hide under my desk and avoid eye-contact. I’ve tried time and again to convince myself that this is just a placebo-effect, but the results are really hard to argue with.
Before I started I felt like shit 24/7. I had zero energy, and zero motivation. I was lethargic for every hour of every day. I didn’t eat right. I didn’t exercise. I didn’t study. I didn’t care about personal hygiene. And I could not care. In the state that I was in, it was extremely difficult to stand for more than 3 minutes, let alone do something productive.
[Week 7] When I was masturbating all the time, I actually had an aversion to touch. Lately, I’ve been craving touch and intimacy. The urge for it has never been this strong and it’s actually making me depressed and cranky that I’m not getting any. Before abstaining, I always thought this to be a sign of weakness. I thought, “I can get off by myself. I don’t need anyone.”
I was masturbating since the age of 15 and now I am 20. 5 awful years. I can’t remember when I wasn’t depressed. But that wasn’t like that before. I was socialized, outgoing and a little bit hot-headed. But then I started doing all that stuff. Today I am not selfconfident, grumpy, depressed. gloomy. I can’t even talk normaly to my friend and family anymore. And at first i thought that it was okay, ’cause many people here in Russia reserved on the outside so I was like everyone. But after some months it all changed. I had no normal girlfriend because i was scared, just scared to talk. I became really shy.
I’ve felt a lot of different symptoms, from anxiety and social anxiety, a lack of confidence, apathy in general, to not so much depression, but more of an emotional numbness that I can’t quite describe because, well, it felt like nothing at all. In high school I’d binge for hours at a time into the night, which lead to lack of sleep. That negatively affected my concentration and energy in school and sports. Thinking back now, the only thing I really wanted to do every day and looked forward to was PMOing. I didn’t care about what I did on a daily basis, and watched my potential go awry in favor of long, lonely nights of short-term gratification on the computer. By 19, I had erectile dysfunction and couldn’t get it up when a girl invited me to have sex. Recently it’s been paranoia; when I’m with my friends I feel as if every laugh is mocking me, that they talk bad behind my back, think I’m crazy, and on and on.
(Another) unexpected benefit of giving up masturbation: The dark thumb spot on my dick from death gripping has started to fade.
When I was a child I remember being very outgoing with lots of motivation. That all changed when I was about 14. Now that I think about it, it’s the same time I began to start a internet porn addiction. I had my own computer in my room. I would spend my entire weekends and evenings watching porn, often even skipping sleep. This has continued into my adult life and I am now 25. I have suffered bad social anxiety, and a lack of any motivation. I never connected these things together. I also, never really knew how bad I was addicted until I tried to quit. I realized I can only get aroused with porn.
I’m a 20 yr old guy. Been watching porn for the past 2-3 years. I desperately want to quit. I am straight. But I’ve been wanking off too much. This caused me to lose all interest in women. Even gangbang scenes became boring (no erections). Then one day I was with a friend (guy). I got this thought, that, girls aren’t turning me on anymore, HAVE I FUCKING TURNED GAY???!!! I have nothing against gay people, mind. Since then I’ve not had a moment’s rest. I’m straight……I’ve had so many girl crushes in my life. Had 2 girlfriends. But this is strange and disturbing… feeling suicidal.
My addiction started when I was fifteen (I’m now twenty two), and fluctuated in severity over the years. The last few years I had a habit of about 4-5 times a week. I’m a textbook example of all the common symptoms of PMO addiction. Extreme social anxiety, depression, lack of anything remotely resembling focus or motivation, emotional numbness and a general withdrawal from life.
The physical mechanics of how I masturbated became warped over time. I was gripping too hard and the strokes I was using were very vigorous. It wasn’t like that initially, so why did it end up like that after 10 years of masturbation? Probably because of the porn use. My theory is that as the extremity and weirdness of the porn that you use increases, you find it gradually more and more difficult to get turned on. In order to compensate for this, gradually over time you go at it a little bit harder and harder. Tightening that grip and becoming more vigorous.
Side effects started floating up… Lower back pain, muscle spasms, loss of muscle mass, fatigue, irritability, over stimulated nervous system (exhausted), inability to rationalize, memorize properly, study. (I’m in dental school.)
Fapping really drains me of energy, just everyday life is exhausting. A few weeks on NoFap and I’m full of LIFE, lifting at 6 am, heading to school and keep productive all day.
(Story by recovered user) A few months ago the company handed out new smart phones for Navigation to employees who did not already have one. It was only a matter of time before my formerly computer-illiterate coworker discovered the magical world of porn. The other day he was driving down the road in a company car and masturbating on the highway WITH another coworker in the car. That is when you know you have problems. The life of porn is already destroying his relationship with his wife. He was in a screaming match with her over the phone at the job site, talking about kicking her out of their house. One coworker chimed in and said ” go home make up with her and stick it in her butt” (sorry for the graphic wording.) My coworker responds with … ” I don’t even want to. I am bored of her. I rather go home and jack-off to porn.” He was 100% serious when he made that statement, you could see it in his face.
I’m a normal/good looking guy in good shape, etc but last few years have def been kinda a bum w/ little motivation and seemed like I was always tired, needed naps, etc, enjoyed being alone, maybe a little down overall, didn’t try for good looking girls. My porn use escalated. I could always get up w/ P, but when mixed in real girls it was a roll of the dice. Not a way to live our lives.
I was heavily addicted to porn for 5 plus years. ZERO sex, I would edge and binge all day everyday until the tip of my dick was raw. During this 5 years of PMO binges the few chances I did get to get in bed with girls.. I had absolutely no movement down there what so ever. It was excuse after excuse,,, Im not ready.. Im to tired, can we wait till the morning. It was BRUTAL.(Read about recovery.)
I was spending 3 or 4 hours every single day “trying to find that next perfect girl” and busting my nut once almost every single day. I started to get tired all the time, my face was becoming pale, these dark circles were formed under my eyes constantly, I was sleeping 10 hours a day and STILL waking up tired, AND I began pulling clumps & clumps of hair out of the shower. I remember my old girls I used to hook up with would meet me out at a bar or something and they would always have this shocked look on their face. “OMG is that him????” My other friends and family also commented on how skinny I was getting and I “need to eat more”… the funny thing was, I was a bodybuilder, I went from 220 to 180, no shit, even WITH exercising and eating lots of organic food and excess calories. I was wittling away to nothing. I started getting all these weird irrational fears around people. I felt shakey and weak. My voice is more hollow, if that makes sense. I lost myself. I was depressed constantly. I stopped leaving my house.. my friends slowly faded. So I’m now a balding and skinny socially awkward pale weirdo, lol, where I used to be the King of my campus… wtf! I’m convinced, through irrefutable experience that this horrible shit is so fucking unnatural and drains a man’s SOUL. I didn’t change ANY OTHER VARIABLE IN MY LIFE except for getting addicted to pornography and fapping more often. That’s it. I was still thinking positively, going out to bars, eating healthy, exercising, all that jazz. The ONLY thing that increased was my love affair with the fake girls on the blaring pixelated screen. I seriously feel like I can’t concentrate or comprehend much after a binge, some days I’m literally bed-ridden because my eyestrain is so bad….
My addiction to porn has caused a lack of sleep, stress at work, too much money spent, a lack of being aroused during sex with my wife, and an overall feeling that “I’m not right with the world”. There were many times I felt lonely, because I couldn’t talk with people about what had become a large part of my life.
The worst part about it is trying to pick up a girl while you’re ‘on porn’. On the one hand I always seemed to be horned up or looking at women just for their ass, boobs, etc. On the other hand I’d expect women to act like the ones in porn (if you can call that acting!), so when they didn’t show that level of sleazy interest then I just didn’t make a play. Worst of all though is that I’d worry about being sexually depleted and unable to perform after just having looked at porn. That alone stopped so many opportunities.
My lowest point was when I lost out on my pharmacy diploma and lost my girlfriend on the same day, due to porn and procrastination. I had escalated from straight to gay porn and yet one day I found myself lying on a bed, having my dick sucked by a guy and not getting it up. And you know what the worst thing is? I was watching porn on his phone and getting sucked at the same time and i could not get it up. I left guys and my “gayism” there and then and never looked back.
My routine was to smoke a shit ton, get high and fap. I would fap so much to the point of which nothing would come out, the skin on my dick would be raw and chafed. I also hated public places. I never made eye contact with people, always stared at the ground, and was just so depressed. Even crossing the street would make me nervous because I thought all the drivers were watching me and thinking of how awkward I was. Original post
I kinda just felt separate from everyone, and as a result would drink to excess in hopes of appearing more confident… Didn’t work LOL. Thing is, I used to be so confident and popular. I even had counselling to address my ED, lack of confidence and social anxiety etc… but never was the question asked about porn use. If it had been asked, I could have sorted this a while ago. Though in hindsight it is blatantly obvious that it was porn use which was the cause. But if a professional isn’t going to back up your hunch, and our generation is being brought up to believe P and M is normal and necessary, how was I to know? Doh!
At the peak of my PMO habits, orgasm ceased to feel good anymore. It was just a way of self-medicating.
I always have negative dreams, sometimes really intense sometimes just mildly negative, but ALWAYS negative, every day of my life. Just a few days into Nofap I realize that my dreams are 100% pure positivity and I wake up happy and motivated full of energy. This for me is a clear indicator that NOFAP works since there is clearly a change for the better with my subconscious. Tldr; No nightmares anymore, only happy dreams since NoFap.
I began looking at porn at 11-12 and lost my virginity around 22. The girl had to forcefully jack me off for me to come. My penis was completely numb to a vagina. I would get hard during foreplay, but I couldn’t have sex for more than a few minutes without going soft.
Today, I have a loving girlfriend and we have had a lot of sex. But I still have problems with cumming. I don’t cum when I want to. Did a lot of anal, and that helped because it was one of the big fetishes I masturbated to. But I wanted to cum from having sex in the vagina; it felt so much more fulfilling.
I have been doing worse and worse since I started this habit. My health has declined. I get sick almost all the time. I am always tired. The things that I used to love most are no concern of mine anymore. I can’t be passionate about anything anymore. I have no sense of competition. My body is brittle and frail. My skin takes forever to heal. Porn/masturbation has ruined my life and I wouldn’t wish this on my greatest enemy. I don’t want to lose my Girlfriend but she doesn’t deserve a passion lacking boyfriend who cant please her mentally or physically.
I have felt so emotionally numb for years now that I really feel like I have lost who i am. I don’t know what I feel about things, nothing makes me happy/sad. Sometimes when I’m talking I don’t even know where the words come from, it’s like there is just an eloquent spew of logical information pouring out of my mouth that I don’t seem to resonate with at all. I have felt I was just wading through life for ages. I feel like everyone else ‘gets it’ and I’m only just starting to learn [now that I’ve quit.] Most people don’t really understand the gravitas of heavy porn use and how it can truly suck the life out of you.
Brain fog, fatigue, desire for isolation, and social anxiety are just some of my symptoms.
PMO gave me:
- Impotence – check
- Acne – check
- Sunken eyes – check
- Loss of memory – check
- Lack of libido – check
- Abnormal appetite – check
- Headaches – check
- Plus more..
When I go out I feel the desire to have sex with women, which I didn’t before. I would see a girl and know that I was attracted to her, but I wouldn’t feel the urge to have sex with her. It was like my brain was thinking that, even though this girl was attractive it could find better and more stimulating with porn. Now I find myself actively trying, and succeeding, with hooking up with girls at parties. It feels much more natural and fun than it ever has.
I find when I abstain for a long period of time, I don’t need to urinate as frequently. It got pretty bad during my addiction, I was using the toilet a lot! Also, I used to worry that my friends would be talking about me behind my back a lot, it got to the point where I confronted a close friend about it and asked him if our other friends ever said anything bad about me, it turned out they didn’t, aside from saying they thought I was a decent guy, so even my perception of what people say/think becomes distorted when I’m on a PMO binge.
[Posted on a “depersonalization” forum] I have had DP for 1.5 years, however My DP has since gotten a lot better as of about 3 months ago. I am about 65% back to normal.I noticed that when I developed DP, my porn use increased quite a bit. I had begun watching porn every day or every other day, and I was watching quite extreme stuff.In that brain-fog state, I wasn’t really aware of anything in my own life. Everything felt like a dream so I wasn’t noticing this pattern. I read something about excessive porn use being linked to social anxiety and depression. I decided it might be a good idea that I stopped.Initially I only lasted about 3 weeks and then caved, getting back heavily into both (I had to make up for lost time :P). But I noticed something during those 3 weeks. Although I still found it hard to connect with people, my social anxiety had decreased DRAMATICALLY. I could have conversations with people no problem and i was generally more excited about life. I remember my brother telling me something that made me laugh for ages, and it felt incredible to really feel that amidst DP. If you have noticed that you are watching more porn since you have gotten DP, I understand. I watched it because it was one of the few forms of pleasure that was still available to me in that state of mind. Porn has a way of making you even more reclusive and anxious if you use it regularly. With DP this is a nightmare.Now I masturbate without porn. I feel much better about myself and a lot of my anxiety is leaving me. Give it a try, go 2 weeks without porn and see how you feel. If it doesn’t make you feel any better then wack away.
I’ve been quite socially anxious. I know it’s porn related, as a few years back I was far more social than I am now, and was far more happy, funny. This was when I wasn’t using porn at all.
I’ve used porn for over a decade, but since strange symptoms showed up (more than a year ago) I have been questioning if the body really was designed to ejaculate every day, thinking of my ancestors who had no birth control supplements and probably didn’t ejaculate nearly as often. I’m 25 now, but when I was a little younger my buddies and I could talk about stuff like this pretty openly and all of us masturbated probably every day. I personally masturbated 2-4 times a day, with internet porn, from when I was twelve to maybe twenty-two. After that, I settled down for about once a day, of course with internet porn. Anyhow, the symptoms that began to show up more than a year ago were: strange headaches, a very shallow and almost tight voice, I could feel dry inside my eyes and feel dry in the face in general. At morning, I could feel a strange unpleasant feeling in my whole body. I couldn’t focus on my studies for longer than 40 minutes before getting the same strange feeling in my body, which made me lie down on the couch and have a nap for one hour. I was crazy. I thought I had diabetes (low blood sugar), bad vision (I tested my vision which was perfect) I even thought I had ADD or ADHD, because I could be pretty impulsive from time to time. In addition to that, I was feeling pretty insecure in social meetings and didn’t feel safe and comfortable around people in general. I felt like a child sometimes. Impulsive, restless and so on. I could even feel how my sex appeal was down at zero. But I couldn’t do anything about it! I tried several things such as meditation, yoga, exclude caffeine from my diet, workout a lot and so on. Nothing helped. I had no idea all these symptoms came from the chemical imbalance in my brain because of my daily masturbation to porn. But after investigating I started cutting down my porn consumption and masturbation, slipped and move on, slipped again, felt frustrated and binged, moved on even further and felt happy about it, slipped and felt bad about it again and so on. Finally, after going for about two weeks without porn or masturbation I felt great stuff. All of the symptoms listed above were gone and I felt so calm and comfortable socially. I talked firm, stable and calm. I laughed and smiled with my whole face. I got charming and could flirt. The feeling of lacking sex appeal was gone and I even noticed better response and reactions from the people around me. I got better connections with my friends, family, co-workers and of course girls. I finally knew how it felt to have a balanced brain.
I am a 21-year old man who has been masturbating with porn since the age of 11. For the last few years of my life, I felt as though I have lived in a constant state of mental haze, and have also suffered from an inability to focus. I have not had any desire to seek intimate relations with women, and have found my taste in porn slowly gravitating towards transexual porn <– something that I know is inconsistent with my natural desires.
Been viewing and masturbating to porn for the past 6 years, and it turned into an addiction roughly three years ago. Started graduate school last year…completely overwhelmed me. In addition to struggling with simple “grown-up” tasks, my academic life was a mess. I’d have to read something over and over to even begin to understand it. I had a terrible time keeping up in conversations with my colleagues. Conversing in general was difficult and felt unnatural. I’d regularly be unable to think straight while instructing the undergrads. I was never sharp, never felt “myself”. And forget about relating to women. I found all of this absolutely baffling. Did I have a brain tumor? Are these struggles just what happens in the initial stages of an academic career, or when learning to be self-dependent? I had no idea. I tried everything to help it–exercise, diet changes, supplements. Some of it helped, but the problem was still there. Then, about a month ago, I came across this site. It all made sense. After reading up on the info and testimonies, I couldn’t help but conclude that the one thing in my life that I hadn’t thought to examine–my masturbating to porn numerous times a day–was the cause of it all. Excited, I went 9 days PMO-free. Felt great. The world had color again. I was thinking clearly. My memory improved. My handwriting improved (!). I wanted to be in the company of others, to interact with others, for the first time in years. I wanted desperately to HUG (and only hug) a girl–a desire I hadn’t fully experienced since high school. Then, I got cocky, looked at some garbage (thinking it wouldn’t affect me), and ended up doing the deed (surprise, surprise). After intermittently succumbing to PMO over the next week, it became clear that beating this thing would require some serious lifestyle changes.
If I see a naked picture of my girlfriend, I get much more turned on then seeing her naked in person.
I’m 23. My family had told me on numerous occasions I was a shell of myself compared to when I was 18 (in a loving way. I needed to hear it after all.) And, as for my friends, they weren’t as direct with me, but it was clear. I wasn’t close to the same person. Since 2008, I developed debilitating social anxiety, depression, lack of drive, physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, couldn’t hold a job, couldn’t even walk down the university halls without feeling scared to death of people, felt creepy around females from young to old etc. Specifics:-would have to edge for a good half-hour just to get hard and my erection would escape if I looked away from the computer screen for more than 5 seconds-eventually got into rougher stuff. gangbang, big dick, rough, sometimes even abusive. (but thankfully never child, old, gay)-My biggest fetish was cum. I find it pathetically funny, because it’s apparent that I got off on seeing others cum which is something I couldn’t do, which is why I loved watching it—which in turn lowered my chances of physically being able to do so myself.-would M till my thing was raw and lifeless-became so good at M’ing that I could cum even if my dick was shriveled (pardon the specifics)
When I myself was deep in this shit, I underestimated the impact of porn. I thought it was just taking away say 20% of my life. But soon I realised it was close to 99%. It is damn shit scary.
(age 37) Not only have I experienced ED from fapping while watching internet porn/cable TV porn in my 20s, but I also experienced the dopamine issues with needing more and taking it to the next level. I have never ejaculated with my wife due to internet porn. I hope that this will change one day. Here’s a list of physical issues I have had over the years based on my extreme fap position that I take when watching internet porn (it’s a weird straining squat-like position): ED without porn, burning urination pain, double stream urination, back pain, thumb pain, bleeding hemorrhoids, unbalanced muscle tone, bad posture, raw penis/chaffing/dried skin, and insomnia from not watching. Mental issues: HOCD (started with shemales), addiction, depression, frustration, guilt, not socializing, double-life, falling in love with images, acting out fantasizes in real life (worst thing I ever did). Legal issues: Can’t get into it here, but it was in danger when acting out.
With high-speed internet I was always searching for the “right clip”: transexuals, hermaphrodites, amateur swingers, even gay. I did not notice what I was doing to my brain. I did not notice that I was wanking my willy too much and using a death grip.
I loved the idea of being in love with someone but could not connect it to sex… sex was something done on tv screens… in vids and in 30 second clips you’d string together. Sex and love were separate in my head… I just never knew it. Porn taught me this. Porn reinforced it through almost seven years of viewing videos one to three times a day. Hundreds of women… some I’d never even find attractive but their slight differences was novelty enough. All those pornstar names… all those threesomes… foursomes and skipping to the hottest parts. Of course I didn’t understand sex… I understood porn. Sex wasn’t important anymore… it became disposable… something to be tossed away at the first instance possible. The idea of sex wasn’t even one of pleasure… it was one of getting off and watching porn. I almost feel like (in my head) I disconnected romance and sex. I had an attraction towards romance and an attraction towards pornography. Romantic sexual attraction became an impossibility… the two became so disconnected in my head that I could never really connect the two as what was supposed to be an entity.
My over analysis/depression problems started exactly at same time when I began frequent masturbation. More recently, I have observed that whenever I am masturbatoin-free for a few days, I push myself to act towards my goals instead of analyzing them too much. On the other hand, in the 2-3 days following a relapse, I end up in analysis-paralysis and depression.
Btw I realise now how different my life was 1 year ago … I was so addicted to porn that it caused me to cancel parties, also the parties on New Year’s. Last year and the year before during the New Year’s party I used to masturbate and watch porn when the time hit 24:00 …… thats how addicted I used to be!
It eventually got to the point where I’d often spend at least 4-5 hours every night trying to find the perfect video or image. Pretty sad when I think about it! Sometimes I would even call in sick to work and spend all night on the computer. I wouldn’t realize how much time went by until I saw the sun rising. I knew I had a serious problem. Also, I have been struggling with anxiety and depression since I was 13 just about the same time I started using porn on a regular basis.
My reasons for wanting to quit are- My mood plummets after binging; I get easily annoyed with people- It puts me in a one track state of mind all I can think about is porn- Disrupts my sleep, when I go to bed I have a kaleidescope of porn in my head- It’s annoying to find myself doing the same thing over and over.
I always used to find some new site or subgenre, or technology or delivery mechanism that would be like “Well I can’t quit yet, this new stuff is amazing.” Before I discovered this site that happened so many times. I’d tell myself I was going to quit, but that would go out the window because I’d discover that something existed, and it would just short-circuit the whole process in my brain.
Watch porn most of the day, feel like shit most of the day, be lonely most of the day. Have no mate most of your life… It’s lame. It was a fun stage, but for me its over (at least I hope). It’s just childish now. I’m finally starting to see it for what it is.
I am over 40, and got my first computer at the age of 30. Before then, I had a masturbation addiction, which was probably no more than the average male, but it was the fact I was aware that I couldn’t give up that made me conscious of it. When I got a computer I found myself more and more looking at porn, although at the same time I hated it, and frankly found it really boring. But it must be the dopamine, because I frequently resorted to porn when I got upset in some way. And became more secretive, irritable, and generally unhappy. I can honestly say that porn has been the single most destructive element of my life, reaching into every aspect, including my marriage and my career. I am desperate to end it.
I think it’s pretty alarming that something like 81% of men in college watch porn and WOMEN, 31% of them watch it. I found this more alarming than 81% of men, because I’ve heard via several sources that women aren’t turned on by visual cues and they’d rather read a romance novel. I guess that claim just went out the window, since 1 out of 3 women watch pornography. (Wow, that still seems like a lot.) Seriously that’s really, really bad, not good, for us guys. I definitely don’t want my future wife’s brain to be desensitized by porn, so her life seems very boring and bland. I remember when I used to think it was so cool if a cute girl watches porn. Jeez this is awful though. It’s sad to see how bad technology has screwed with our brains thanks to internet porn.
[Age 67] My whole life had become an isolated, lonely fantasy existence of flaccid orgasms generated by bizarre pornographic scenarios which I either concocted myself or found on the internet. I spent a lot of time being embarrassed and ashamed.[Now] I like being able to look women in the eye, not feel like a weirdo or a hypocrite and a liar. I like being clear headed and feeling rational. I like feeling good about myself. I found out that porn dramatically affects how I relate to everyone around me and more profoundly affects how I feel about myself.
Ok so this is my personal experience with how fapping and porn have effected my weightlifting. Maybe other people have had different experiences, so I am not saying this is how it will effect everyone. I am 19 and have been working out in the gym for football since the eighth grade. I have always hated porn and masturbation, but i didn’t think it had any proven negative effects. After I discovered the TED videos, and proof that porn and masturbation are harmful, I started to wonder how many things my porn addiction was effecting. I don’t have a problem talking to girls, I am not socially awkward, and I have had several girlfriends in the past. I also started on a varsity football team my sophomore year of highschool. When I continued to look back at what porn was effecting, I realized that it had been effecting my athletic performance. Halfway through my junior year of high school is when I really got hooked on porn and masturbation, and I can remember having less energy during practice, less focus, and less feeling of accomplishment when we won games. These same effects of PMO have followed me into the weight room this off season. As an example, my power clean max was stuck at 230lbs for several weeks, and I could not figure out what I was doing wrong. On a seventeen day streak, I felt so energized, focused, and confident, that I was able to power clean 15 pounds over my max. I always see more progress and feel stronger when I have not fapped in a few weeks. Unfortunately I have fallen back into bad habits recently, but I know that if i want to become the strongest I can be, I need to quit porn and masturbation.
Lately I have been researching whether dopamine irregularities were a cause of OCD and thought disorders. I have been suffering with that since I started masturbating excessively at an early age and with the OCD intensifying as I got hooked on to porn.
I am going on record with the list of reasons why I hate FAPPING to porn, and therefore why I am determined to overcome it.
- It turns me into a zombie, who doesn’t care about anything else. I forget things, avoid things, procrastinate, switch off from my wife and kids just to get some time alone with my iPad and to feed the habit.
- I have the most beautiful wife who, when fapping, I ignore in favour of much less attractive ‘women’ that I don’t even know.
- It disturbs my sleep and drastically reduces the quality of my work and my ability to focus.
- it wastes time. My time, my wife’s time, my kids’ time. By fapping, I am therefore wasting my life and reducing the quality of theirs.
- it numbs me to the vibrant word around me that is full of genuine opportunity to grow, develop, achieve, help others, the list goes on…
I was escalating into some of the worst porn, and even then I wasn’t getting much relief, even after wasting hours a day. Now that my brain is more sensitive (a few weeks porn-free) I don’t need such intense porn, but if I started again it would only be a matter of time before I’d be in the same position. And then what? I am only 24-25 years old.
Once I discovered YBOP in June and started my initial reboot, I felt like superman and my self-confidence soared and my social anxiety dissipated greatly. I started talking to women and challenging myself to be more outgoing. I didn’t care as much what people thought of me and even told many of my friends about my issues with porn and what its negative effects were on me. I feel like I’ve helped some of them because porn really is a problem for my generation. (I’m 23.) Almost all of my male friends regularly watch porn and have for years.
To many of us (myself included), ED was the first real concrete/shocking sign that shakes us up, and makes us realize that something about our sexuality isn’t right. Yes, there might have been thoughts about porn or relationships, but somehow when it effects ‘my ED, my penis’ the issue just becomes completely unavoidable, ‘front and center’ in our lives.
Who I was when I started:
- I was a totally different person, like welcome to Pathetic Town, population: me aka faggot.
- I was riddled with guilt and shame. I couldn’t hold eye contact with people. I would be overcome with fear in basic interactions.
- Would routinely want to be swallowed into the ground.
- No idea where I was going in life.
- Dead eyes, bad skin, weak voice, NO ENERGY.
- Terrible memory and conversation skills.
- Social recluse with no real friends
- Would objectify every girl, I was a terrifying weirdo to them
- All in all it just felt like there was some fucking dark fog hanging over my life
- Feel bad –> watch porn –> keep feeling bad –> watch more porn –> DURRR Y DO I FEL BAD
Who I am now:
- Passionate about life, joyful vibrant person
- Full of energy and motivation
- Deeper voice, better skin, vibrant eyes, THICK COCK
- Morning wood 😀
- Can see a bigger picture of things, learned a lot from this journey
- Confident in social situations and talking to strangers and loved ones
- Focused on my dreams and hobbies
- Popular, make friends easily, able to express myself
- Hot girls actually miss me — what the fuck?
- The fog has lifted and its hard to describe how much better life is afterwards.
THIS IS REAL LIFE.
I used to be quite energetic when I was 16-17 (I guess my hormones were unleashing hell). But somewhere halfway through 18, I started becoming a chilled guy. I thought I just matured. This was when my porn-period started and I started using caffeine like a maniac. I did not feel any strong emotions at all. I believe the emotions start returning gradually. I notice that I grow better week by week I’ll keep this up!
I can’t seem to get over this sadness that something is wrong with me for not having a sex drive and not having any erections and blunting my responsiveness to women through masturbation and porn for all these years. I mourn the relationship that ended as a result of it as well as the time and youth wasted indoors by myself obsessively watching videos and reading erotic material and fantasies.
Now I see how much damage I have to repair. I just turned 33 and in many ways I feel like I’m picking up where I left off at age 20 or so. Christ, I barely even know where to begin. It’s not like I had it all figured out back then, either. I just procrastinated on dealing with any of it by losing myself in pornography, masturbation and madness. Now I wake up 13 years later and realize I’m still just as clueless and afraid, except that now I don’t have a decade to flush down the toilet while I avoid facing it. What I’m mainly talking about here are personal relationships. You know, women. Sex. Love. Going on dates. I feel like I don’t have much time left if I want to have children and start a family but…how can I even entertain that idea when I’m not sure if I can get it up long enough to have sex once, let alone enough times to successfully procreate.
I personally have talked to 3 of my best friends at one time or another, and all 3 of them had the same PMO problem, and they all told me they felt hopeless about it. One of my friends was very into quitting, and we actually started the same day, but he told me a couple days later he had messed up. After that he didn’t want to talk about the whole thing anymore because he just felt hopeless, that he wouldn’t be able to quit.
Through the years I have denied myself (and a couple of the girls I’ve been with) the opportunity to form the emotional bonds which nature truly intended. I think that my addiction to porn has contributed to the failure these relationships, which may have held an otherwise promising future.
I am in my late 30’s, have used porn heavily since my teens, and have had erectile dysfunction problems for a long time – at least since my late 20’s, though it’s only recently that it has become almost total copulatory ED. I’ve blamed it on partners (“I’m just not attracted to you”/”I wish you were more responsive”), the newness of partners (“I need to give my body time to catch up to my brain”), fitness levels, diet, age, stress, performance anxiety… And actually, all of those, except for the “I’m just not into you” factor, probably have a part to play. But when I realized I could no longer even masturbate to orgasm without porn – something clicked. It seems blindingly obvious now, of course.In fact, I’m wondering if there’s any connection or correlation between too much porn and ADHD (which was one of the things I was seeing my psychologist for). I know ADHD folks are prone to impulsive and addictive behaviour and crave constant stimulation.
I’ve gotten abrasions from too much (like, an hour +) fapping to porn. And a couple of times I had blood in my semen. It was just because of the frequency at that point in time (think I was watching porn 3 times a day then), and the level that I’d brought it to. Ever have a session where the only way you felt like getting off was by iron-vicing it AND doing kegels and whatever else? Yeah… I popped a couple of blood vessels, which mixed in. That’s all it was, fortunately.
What made your site jump out at me is that all the symptoms you described—the flagging libido, the ED when having sex with a partner, recurring bouts of depression, lack of goals etc—match me to a tee.
(Age 16) [I just masturbated to illegal porn and] I’m traumatized by it. The same way I was when I did it to horse porn and incest stories. Why can’t I just get off on normal porn at least??? Anyways… I need advice. How can I get this out of my head? How can I just forget about it and move on. I have such a heavy anxiety inside me now because of this.
Usually, I masturbate using no lube, so the feeling of a wet vagina or mouth was always a strange, non-pleasurable sensation for my penis. I never liked it, and so I think that was also part of the reason why I couldn’t maintain erections in the past during sex. My penis was used to getting hard only when it was stimulated with a dry, extremely forceful hand and unrealistic porn-based fantasies. No wonder I’ve always had trouble with intercourse – 99% of the stimulations my penis had ever experienced were completely different from actual sex with an actual woman. This time (day 30) I was glad that I could get rock hard to nothing more than the feel of my own hand and the lube. I never realized before but there were so many times when I turned down girls not just because I was nervous or anxious about sex, but because engaging in porn and masturbation 2-5 times a day had warped any and all desire I had to get out there and do what should come naturally to me – go out and seek girls and sexual experiences with them, be it casual sex or romantic pursuits.
When I’m using porn heavily, any kind of novelty that’s unrelated to porn just doesn’t seem worth it. Even watching a new television show or playing a new game feels like a huge chore.
In my final stages before I quit porn, I would need the extreme. Ultimately, I wasn’t even interested in the orgasm.
In my youth, I used to walk into a room and people would notice me and be attracted to me and want to talk to me. When I walked down the street I felt a confidence and energy and girls would notice that and acknowledge me. As the years rolled by, PMO increased and that energy slowly went away. My social life suffered. I always attributed it to aging, but I was wrong. I’m very relieved that I have identified the culprit. I can feel that energy coming back now.
Daily masturbation, sometimes up to 5 times, multiple tabs, edging for hours until my dick felt nonexistent and my brain burnt like crazy. Was I single? No! The girlfriend was always asking for sex, but I would fake orgasms just to get the real “rush” with porn when she’s gone. One time I had an orgasm with her, was fully satisfied, but couldn’t resist porn after she left the house like an a hour after. Then it happened: my girlfriend was like disappearing. In bed she would look like fog. My brain was full of other images. I’d be thinking about porn images while fucking, feeling foggy, sleepy, absent, like my girl was ten miles from me, so naturally, ED hit. Denial, didn’t want to stop my other love story, my longest affair ever! So I kept fantasizing while with her trying to get it hard, and my lovely girlfriend became barely another masturbation tool. I became sad, depressed, irritable, and felt I was living in a sort of bubble. The ED got worse, even fantasies weren’t enough.
I have definitely experienced this effect many times: feeling like I might orgasm even though I wasn’t hard at all.
I’m in my mid twenties and a sufferer of this apparent new-fangled 21st Century broadband driven ED disorder. I’ve had three chances to lose my virginity with real flesh and blood women and I’ve failed every time (as in, these women were in my bed and ready to go, clothes off, but I couldn’t do it. I’ve had other chances, and even other girls sleeping in my bed, but I didn’t make the move because I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it… even between the ages of 18 to 22). I won’t go into the details but each time felt incredibly embarrassing, depressing and emasculating. I’m not gay in the slightest (I am in fact a raging heterosexual) but I simply could not have sex with these women. If I could choose one word to describe what it felt like when I tried to have sex with them, I’d use the word ‘alien.’ It felt artificial and foreign to me. It’s like I’ve gotten so conditioned to sitting in front of a screen and jerking it with the death-grip all these years that my mind considers that to be normal sex instead of real actual sex. I can get hard for porn, no problem, but not for the life of me can I get hard for a real woman.
Porn has corrupted my mind in regards to real life women. I go from one woman to the next because they don’t **** like pornstars and the sexual restrictions they have disappoint me.
As someone who suffers from dark circles around my eyes naturally, they get so much worse when i fap. the skin gets red and rough and darker and my eyes look so so tired. When i came home for christmas on a streak of 14 days my parents said i looked so fresh faced and good and my eyes looked better, which has happened several times on other streaks…. My eyes get better, my skin gets clearer and my eyes sparkle so much more, and i notice it a lot myself too.
I think the ratio of people I know in person that have PMO addiction issues is under-reported, because either A) They don’t know it’s a problem, or B) They are too embarrassed to tell me or other people, or C) They don’t think there’s anything they can do anything about it, or enough support groups. Three of my friends did realize they had a problem, but 2 of them said they’ve made attempts to quit, and they just literally think there’s nothing they can do about it. They accept they’re pretty much fucked for life. The knowledge part about the reward circuitry is a a pretty big factor, since abstaining relies heavily on using logic, and strengthening the brain. Otherwise, you don’t know why you’re stopping.
I started to notice the effects of frequent porn use when I was around 22 or 23. I started to lose interest in girls in real life. I had both erectile dysfunction and delayed ejaculation when with a real girl. This led to me avoiding sex and more masturbation.
It’s increasingly clear to me now that several excellent relationships I’ve had in the past have failed in large part because of PMO. I find myself single at 36, which isn’t the worst thing in the world, but not where I thought I’d end up. I sometimes start feeling sorry for myself and regretting the issues PMO has caused in my life, but then I look on the bright side–at least I’ve finally figured this out. There’s always time to turn things around.
There were some nights where I would orgasm 3 or 4 times, if I really didn’t feel like doing my homework. For those of you who don’t have experience with that (hopefully most of you), it doesn’t feel good anymore; the orgasms can even hurt.
My main problem for about 3 years now (I-m a 20-year old male) has been chronic fatigue and brain fog. There honestly has not been a single day in the last 3 years where I was not very tired to the point I could nap. In fact, I feel like I could have slept at any point during that time except for the ~2 or so hours after I wake up from sleep. The high point in my life was when I graduated high school. I was tall, in good shape, graduated at the top of my class, full ride to a local university where I could have been anything I wanted, had support of loving friends and family, etc. Things were perfect. But then, almost like a curse, as SOON as I started university the problems began to come on. I don’t really know how much I was masturbating but it was too much, and it started catching up with me.
On numerous binges from the past, after giving in I wanted to be alone, was extremely irritable, was drained of energy and filled with shame and regret. Along with the mental fog and inability to handle uncertain situations, combined with a desensitization to the joys of conversation and being around people, I was extremely nervous and awkward in the social arena.
I’ve went for sustained periods of no orgasm before, some lasting up to a month long. However, I still masturbated a LOT during those periods (maybe even more than usual). I did not find there was any difference in how I felt so I relapsed. When I say “how I felt”, I’m referring to my mental state. I have extreme brain fog and can barely concentrate or think most of the time. I also suffer from chronic fatigue, which is annoying. There is some minor ED, but to be honest getting that worked out is secondary to getting my mind back on the right track. I’m young (20) and still in university. I used to be smart as a whip, and had basically every career path imaginable open to me. This PMO addiction has crippled my memory and brain to the point where I’m struggling to do average in school (which I think is pretty amazing considering how I feel).
When I think about it now, I can’t think of any time growing up when I haven’t been hooked to porn in some way (since age 12). On starting university, I quickly hooked up with an amazing girl and stayed with her for about 18 months. Unfortunately I didn’t make the most of those days, and avoided social situations in favour of lonesome nights on the internet… My porn habits have been less and less fulfilling as time as gone on, and recently it brought me (now 23) to a new situation. I recently started amassing literally thousands of porn videos. I don’t even watch them all. I just obsessively collect it. Really weird. It is like some kind of trophy. I was also bingeing on porn, but edging to prolong my masturbation over several days. When I finally finished (about 4 days ago), not only was it completely dissatisfying, but I was in pain and now seem to be unable to achieve a full erection. Not surprising you may say. But I have literally never had a problem with achieving spontaneous erections, some switch has definitely gone off.I think biologically this is the lowest I have gone, although mentally the arousal is still there. I really hope I haven’t done myself serious physical damage and it’s a real wake up call as to what I have done to my brain and body over the years. My main worry now is that even though I think I can give it up, I’m so scared that I’ve done irreparable damage I keep trying to test things are still working. Early days I know, but it literally terrifies me to think that I might not function again, especially now when I am looking to the future and settling down and am contemplating family life more.
I’ve had no sleep from staying up and watching porn. I count down the hours left until I can head home and start masturbating. I’ve avoided phone calls and events to stay home. I’ve neglected some very important work that I need to be focused on. I seriously feel like a drug addict. I have no self-control.
I’ve been given more than enough for a wonderful, productive life. But for years now, I’ve been prone to depressive states and constantly without energy. I had an idea of what was draining me, and tried hard not to acknowledge it. This year I started troubleshooting. I gave up weed without effort, and cigarettes with considerably more effort. I didn’t plan or notice it, but I’ve stopped caffeine as well. I did not feel any acute immediate effects of cessation, but there were slower changes. I lost a degree of mental sharpness, feel even more fatigued, and have lost any drive to do anything. I haven’t hung out with my friends in weeks, and find it hard to answer the phone. I have been a lifelong musician, but I haven’t touched my instruments. I’ve had zero cerebral pleasure lately. Anyways, I’ve gone a few days without masturbation now. I observed one thing today that really unnerved me. I opened some porn and despite my brain’s response, there was no response from the rest of my body. No change in respiration, heart rate, no bloodflow to the penis. I kept paying attention to my body, and I realized that nothing would happen if I didn’t start manually stimulating. It has been like this for a while. My body has been begging for a break.
You know what is giving me extra motivation to stay on the wagon? FEAR. Fear = “Holy shit! I’m going to be 26 pretty soon. A porn-induced ED afflicted 26year old. I just pissed away 10 years of fun I could have had. Instead I was busy huddled over a computer screen. If I don’t nip this in the bud, I’m going to be in my 30s and not have the ability to hold an erection anymore. I’m suddenly terrified of being a neutered 30 year old. It is TERRIFYING!
I didn’t realize how much PMO had been affecting me since I started fapping at least once a day since 6th grade. That was the year I began PMO’ing and where my life took a different path, and I began my descent into porn and eventually into some really weird porn. Looking back, that school year my grades became mediocre because I just stopped trying and didn’t feel like doing the work. I had few friends because I was awkward and had social anxiety. That mentality continued throughout HS and definitely hurt me when applying to colleges. In college, my grades got better because I didn’t want to get kicked out..and I was partying a lot. Sure I got a 3.0 but it could have been so much better. I graduated with an easy degree because I didn’t want to work hard. Throughout middle school, high school, and college I never had a girlfriend and only had a few one night stands with a few girls in college essentially due to alcohol. In college I began to get brain fog, depersonalization, always felt unhappy and tired in addition to being bad/not interested in girls. I thought it was depression or lyme disease and took a lot of recreational drugs to try and make me feel happy and combat why I felt so numb inside. I stumbled onto the site by accident about 6 months ago and realized that this looks to be the source of my problems. It definitely was. Got the chains app on my iPhone to keep track of days which is helping so much. I feel like I’m going through a 2nd puberty as the days go by in benefits from this.
It’s not even that I’m not turned on by the prospect of actual sex. Both the porn and the concept of real sex are exciting (maybe the concept of sex is LESS exciting). It’s just that when in the act, I feel like I don’t know what to do or think in order to get it up. It’s as if my brain has been trained to trigger an erection in response to the porn, and not to the real thing.
I’ve always been the guy that had to rub one out before doing anything. Fap when I wake up. Fap in the shower before work. Fab before bed, usually twice. All in all, at least 3 times a day. Every. Day. I’m 20, and discovered masturbation when I was about 11. So you do the math. … Looking at really fucked up porn to get off because the regular stuff just couldn’t do it anymore, having very very impure thoughts, etc etc. What finally did it for me was I was having intermittent pain when waking up. This has been going on for years, just mild pain in my thighs-lower back-groin, and was always exacerbated by fapping. I put 2 and 2 together and did my research, which all but told me this was 100% due to overmasturbation, ([since quitting]it’s completely gone, no signs it had ever even happened.) And so begins the journey. Day 3 already!
Thank you for your article, Losing At Porn Roulette. Almost word for word, I have gone through the exact same thing as a guy in your article. Reading your words was like lifting a mask of someone else’s face off of mine. I started so early with the Internet, I never really had a chance to form my own identity: rather, I was assigned one by the dopamine downward spiral combined with limitless Internet access. I know I’m not that person, and have been confused by having the same symptoms as the young men in your article; I’ve actually held back from forming romantic relationships because of this.
When I fapped every day (several times per day), if someone called me to go out, I would immediately dismiss it. Even though I thought women were extremely attractive, I felt zero desire to try anything with them, because I was always ‘satisfied’ sexually. As a teenager I went through a period where I fapped about ten times a day (and this is no exaggeration, sometimes it would be more than that), as I grew older, it got to a steady three to four times a day, every day. I had panic attacks for a while, then anxiety attacks, then extreme ADHD symptoms (where I couldn’t focus on anything, abandoned everything I started). I felt a strong sense of shame that I couldn’t help. Now, after 90 days without porn/masturbation, I ain’t going to say I’m anxiety free. But it did diminish like 80% from what it use to be. At this pace I will be anxiety free pretty soon. So, let me make a little list to make this easier on the eye.
- Much less anxiety
- Boner anytime
- Confidence
- Desire to meet people and to go out (I wasn’t as SAP as some of you, but if you are extremely SAP and three months doesn’t cut it, hang in there)
- 100% increase in sensibility
- Women detection radar (every girl within a thirty yard radius will be noticed immediately)
- 100% increase in focus (no more ADHD like symptoms, now I can finish things I start)
I used to think that porn might have saved me from hurting or killing myself. But when giving it a real consideration I have clearly noticed that using PMO only reinforced my anxiety and self-destructive thoughts and behaviour, making everything in life more miserable. SO it is not a benefit of having a “relief” for a while, just to see you’re flushing your life down the drain in a long run.
[Young 20-something] I had just masturbated multiple times in a day and asked myself “Why am I doing this? It doesn’t even feel that good anymore.” and decided give nofap a try. It had been roughly 2 years since my last time even touching a girl. Masturbation was my only sexual outlet.
At present I’m in that state of mind where you just feel like shit because of how much you’ve jerked off. It’s like that ultimate sexual hangover where not only has your libido been crushed, blended, liquefied and made into a soup (which is then eaten and shat out and flushed down the toilet into sewage realms unknown to us living above ground) but the same can be said for your motivation. Everything feels a bit numb and distant and on top of that you’re lazy, unmotivated and the only thing you can actually be bothered doing is telling your peers on the internet how crappy it all feels. I was trying to apply for a job just now but I’ve put it off – just can’t be bothered going through the competency questions.
I have noticed what porn does to the women in my life. It twists and turns almost any and every woman I see into a porn object. It’s getting out of control. It wants to act out the pornographic scenes I’ve watched over the days previous. My mind’s eye replaces the porn starlet with the real women that I am looking at. This is getting on my nerves because it comes up at the most inappropriate times, and just seems to linger sitting in the view of my mind’s eye.
I would go on massive PMO binges that would last from when I would wake up at like 8 ‘o clock in the morning and continue to like 2 or 3 in the afternoon, where even eating, drinking and going to the toilet were foregone. I remember one day seeing myself in the mirror during one of these sessions and I truly looked like a zombie, my eyes looked sullen, bloodshot and completely lifeless. It scared the shit out of me. But that still didn’t stop me. When I orgasmed during these sessions I would tell myself I was done for that day, but hey, 15 minutes later I felt like this crazy lustball and would be back on the computer seeing more vaginas than one man should see in a lifetime. These are some of the consequences of my addiction so far
- low confidence
- -anti social
- -deep guilt, shame, disgust and knowing that I am not fulfilling my potential as a human being each day
- awkward around girls
- approx 2920 hours lost to PMO (8 years x 1 hour PMO a day) this equates to 122 (24 hour days) lost to PMO
- risky behavior such as PMO at both work and university
- failure to get an erection the first time I had sex with a girl. Although since then I have been with a few different girls. I think I generally perform quite well considering, but often find I can’t maintain a full erection throughout (due to forceful hand masturbation-training) and struggle to achieve orgasm with a girl without thinking of porn scenes in my head.
I had ALL of the “symptoms.” I could get “rock” hard from watching porn, but no desire for real sex. It probably started about a year ago. At the same time, my porn “habits” escalated through the roof. I could use hours a day, building up my collection of more and more extreme movies.
Heavy porn use is something society is just ignoring and I think is causing a significant amount of damage. Not only to the people who are addicted, but their significant others and family members who have no idea. I know I’ve lashed out on people before because I hadn’t had my daily fix yet. I didn’t realize that was the cause back then, but now I do and I feel so sorry. I’ve had a beautiful girl say “what’s wrong with me?” about herself to me wondering why I couldn’t get an erection for her. What a horrible thing I made her think, that there was something wrong with her, when it was me that had a serious problem.
My member started to look great after about 4 to 5 weeks. By this I mean the surface did not look dull but much smoother and even kind of translucent. Without the fap, the skin has a chance to soften and recharge. It was definitely noticeable.
My Symptoms Before Nofap
- Zero Signal from D. My beautiful new girlfriend was lying there next to me in bed, and I was at 0% erection. I swore to myself that I’d rather die than ever go through that again. Talk about motivation!
- Due to high anxiety, I would scratch my face in my sleep, to the point where it would leave visible marks. People would ask me if I lost a fight with a cat.
- I couldn’t get to sleep without fapping. I would lie there and worry about everything under the sun.
- I would also grind my teeth while asleep. I was wearing down my molars and now wear a nightguard to sleep. My dentist told me that I’m going to need major dental work if this continues.
- My left shoulder blade would be in constant pain due to all of the repetitive stress caused by hours of edging.
- Dick was shriveled and bruised from all the abuse.
- Anxious all the time.
- Lazy, unproductive. I’d start a project then quickly lose interest.
- Forgetful, rude, antisocial behavior. My mind would wander when someone was talking directly to me.
- Avoided social situations, even with friendly coworkers or my own family. I would make excuses not to spend time with family or friends, in favor of playing some stupid online games. I was withdrawing from real life.
- Slow getting out of bed. Even after 8 hours of sleep, I felt like I could go right back for another 8.
- Little energy/motivation to pursue hobbies or work out.
- I had low self esteem, which made me needy with women. I defined my happiness based on whether I had a woman in my life or not. I would have anxiety-fueled nightmares about my girlfriend breaking up with me, this anxiety spilled over to my waking life, which of course would in turn lead them to break up with me in real life. Age 35 – ED Cured, Life Redefined. Plus Tips, Reading Material, and Observations
From about my early 20’s till now I have been a prisoner of PMO, choosing it over friends, family, work, social events becoming more insecure without it, but ironically even more with it. Through 2011, I have gone to rock bottom for me in actually paying to watch porn (which I swore to myself I would NEVER do) and started to view live cam girls because deep down I wanted something more authentic. Porn’s really something that needs to be taken a lot more seriously in this world as its breaking families apart and just plain right destroying peoples lives.
More and more women view sex in the mechanical ways porn shows: take your clothes off, fuck, put your clothes on. Sex is like something to prove. Guys talk about it in these mechanical terms because they are influenced by what they see on the screen, and women have adopted that from them – in order to be liked by those same guys (about whose sexual habits they have no idea). It’s a very sad story. Guys have become hostage to women’s expectations that they themselves have created.
(Age 22) For as long as I can remember I masturbated up to 3 times a day – even when nothing would come out when ejaculating!! I had a girl over, and lost my erection. It’s really been the final straw. It’s left me mentally distressed. The last month has been horrendous – to the point where the doctor prescribed me Sertraline. One side effect is that it can cause ED! Not what I need right now…
I think that the porn has warped my sense of perception of what a woman should look like. I don’t mean in the traditionally thought sense that I have unrealistic expectations of beauty because the women in porn always have makeup, plastic surgery, etc. I mean that I think that viewing women in a 2d format and as something on a screen rather than something seen in real life has altered the way my brain perceives the 3d dimensional image of a woman and her sillhouette in real life. Even a woman with an attractive figure in real life usually doesn’t get much notice from me because, I think, my sense of perception has been thrown off. Think of it this way… if you only ever saw pictures of a 3d object like a ball which doesn’t really have sides, or a cube but you only ever saw one side at a time, and then someone threw a soccer ball at you, or showed you what a pair of dice looks like… you wouldn’t automatically perceive those things as familiar or normal, or they wouldn’t elicit the same response that the 2d images did.
I have used soft-core porn (think Playboy) for all of my life to masturbate. (I’m 37.) In all of my previous relationships, sex was not usually great (on rare occasions it was good) and it has always been a source of anxiety for me, which has prevented me from seeking sex/relationships. Although I use soft-core, video porn makes me uncomfortable. But I still have a lot of unrealistic expectations for the female body, which interfere with my ability to be attracted by actual women I meet in everyday life. My new partner IS attractive. I can see that intellectually, but my fantasy life and my thoughts about her don’t really intersect.
I always used to masturbate only using my imagination or “wank bank”. But a year and a half ago I got introduced to porn and I seriously started watching it. My life started to spiral downward as a I would watch for about 2-3 hours a day, I got more and more tired, and I didn’t want to do anything. My erections got weaker and weaker, my mind got foggier, until my mother took me to a doctor and I explained my situation. I was diagnosed with major depression, anxiety, and sexual addiction. I started taking medication (Effexor XR), and for the past two months or so, I’ve regained all my energy, started going out and being active again, and my grades improved. I finally felt like I was living up to my potential. Initially people I talked to about porn said porn wasn’t the problem. That’s why I didn’t get it treated sooner. There is a misconception in society that porn is natural and healthy for boys to get rid of their sexual frustrations. People don’t know that too much of it turns you into a zombie.
I remember those days where I would PMO after waking up and be so tired the rest of the day. And the moment I would have some energy I would PMO again… sometimes up to 4 times on a day. I’m so glad that this tiredness is no longer part of my life.
I had a beautiful girlfriend (later my wife), who accepted my lifestyle [foot fetish porn site owner] and was also happy to fulfill any of my fantasies. Instead I still masturbated every day on many occasions to the content that I found on sites other than mine and. Why? Because I was addicted. I would have sex with my wife and then still masturbate afterwards. I would wake up in the morning and the first thing I would think of was masturbation. I would model for a shoot and then masturbate to the same shoot but on video. This would leave me miserable, depressed, depleted of any life energy and irritated. Plus since masturbation is an addictive behavior, it never leaves you satisfied and drives you to masturbate more and more. My brain didn’t work, I couldn’t think straight, my memory was bad. Constant masturbation affected my erection, my performance in bed, it made me paranoid, affecting my relationships with women and people overall. The media made me think it was even good and healthy. But if it was, why did I still feel like crap? Now I’m 30 and masturbation free. I haven’t masturbated for close to a year.
Things really escalated when high speed internet became available to me with no boundaries. My M increased to 3 or 4 times a day. I am now 24 and I realize that this problem is affecting my life and limiting me to what I can achieve. It has caused me to become lethargic, stressed out, obese, anxious, and my outlook on life is full of despair.
When I relapse, things in social settings get awkward. It’s funny. When I’m having a conversation right after a relapse, I say things in my head like, “Why am I even talking to this person? Why would they want to talk to me? What is my monetary, or sexual gain from this conversation?” It’s as if when I relapse there needs to be a stone cold reason, agreed upon, about the benefits for both parties is before we can speak to each other. LOL That’s what the brain does to me when I PMO. It’s shitty shit.
I’m a virgin – partly religion/culture and maybe just waiting for the right girl. LOL So I can’t comment on intimate relations with females, but I can comment on ED. Just before I stopped PMO I remember I used to masturbate on semi-erect. I believe if I had carried on I would have suffered a lot of ED. It’s getting way better. I get erections in the mornings now.
[To a distressed wife] I am a psychology student and also didn’t know [porn could be a problem] for a long time. From my personal experience, fapping can fuck an entire relationship and I just didn’t know better. When you are in a relationship and on the side still fap to porn, it really messes up your brain, because even though you may love who you’re with, your brain understands that you’re also getting all these other hot girls in movies and that’s normal, so you just go and message other girls. It’s like automatic, not even thinking about it. I was in a 3-year relationship that I messed it up. I think if I knew about this I wouldn’t have. We both ended up cheating in the relationship and even though we tried working it out, my brain was way too messed up with everything that was going on and there was a lot of drinking involved as well. When you’re fapping to porn all the time all your thoughts are nebulous and it is hard to think clearly. It’s just SO easy to blow up. In the end I was simply a complete asshole to her and couldn’t think straight, and now I not only lost a 3 year relationship but also my best friend. But maybe things happen for the best because at least for me, when I lost this friendship that was so important to me, I knew I had to change a lot of things about my life and quitting porn was one of them. Also eating healthy, working out, and now I only drink alcohol on special occasions. I do think quitting was really helpful with all this, although I haven’t been in it for too long. But it seems like it is not hard to stop fapping. It is not like cigarettes. It’s just that when you decide to do it, you do it, and when that happens, it becomes much easier to let go of all other bad addictions. All I know is that now I feel better than I have ever felt.So what I suggest is to tell [your husband] about r/nofap somehow and make sure he sees this TED talk. And give him ONE chance. I really feel if I had known about this when I was in a relationship I wouldn’t have been as much of an asshole. I would’ve also been able to control my drinking and eat healthy and just at least keep my friendship. If you want to, have him read my comment. If he is still with you is because he probably wants to try to change. Maybe he just doesn’t have the right information. If you want to change, this is a great way to start. If you do give him all the information he needs and he still chooses to be who he is, then it might just be time to move on.
Anxiety, Sexual Exhaustion, Porn-related ED, fatigue, frequent urination, ex-girlfriend relationships that I have destroyed due to porn, embarrassing memories I have of me going soft during intercourse, money wasted on porn. Enough.
I could no longer masturbate with fantasy and my hand, but needed hardcore, shocking, fast-changing images that only highspeed internet provides. Had my testosterone levels checked results came back fine. Could get a rock hard erection for porn but would lose it as soon as I looked away from the screen in a matter of seconds. Also, the porn I was watching changed over time to stuff I DID NOT want to watch, but needed in order to become aroused Also I lost motivation to do normal everyday rewarding things, or no longer found them rewarding. At the same time, anything related to my acquired tastes would trigger me to want porn or act it out in real life. I made poor choices, such as dropping out of college for no other reason than lack of motivation, and continued porn use despite telling myself “that was the last time.” I felt like a zombie as soon as the thought of porn hit my mind. My memory was horrible, social anxiety increased, severe brain fog during my pmo days. All of those have tremendously improved since giving up pmo.
I had no idea so many young guys were suffering with these symptoms. It seems that my daughters will likely be dealing with “desensitized” mates to a great extent unless something changes fast in our society – which I do not see happening.
Once the relapse starts I end up checking out all my favorite sites, looking to see what’s new, and I keep going and going all night until I’m exhausted, and then I go some more. So consequently, I felt so tired the next day it was unbelievable. I even felt physically sick with body aches, a little sore throat, red eyes, etc… It was very hard to focus on work. I would stare at the computer screen, and keep forgetting what I was doing. Social anxiety was high as usual after a relapse. I didn’t want to be around anyone, and would get irritated very easily. I remember going home after work and trying to sleep, but I couldn’t. My body was extremely exhausted on day 1, but it was hard to fall asleep because my mind was worked up with anxiety. I’m all too familiar with what the aftermath of a porn binge feels like… Almost like I’m only half there, just a shell of the man I could be. My voice is even higher pitched, and sounds somewhat frail. I don’t even like looking in the mirror on those days. There are a couple of girls interested in hanging out with me right now, but I get horribly stressed out when I think of hanging out with them. I still have zero libido from my latest masturbation marathon, and I have no desire to be around real women. All I feel is anxiety. I also found myself at the computer surfing the net. My brain keeps getting stuck in it… Almost like I’m addicted to the stimulation of the internet in general.
I probably started watching porn when I was 15. Considering it a benign thing, since all of my male friends were doing it, my watching behavior escalated. During the last four years masturbating to porn became a daily routine. Still saw no problem, until recently. I’m 21 now. My porn watching behavior took a terrific deviation 7 months ago. During study for finals, I would masturbate up to 3-4 times a day. An easy way to cope with study stress. While spending 12 hours behind a desk, porn is the major fun distraction every day. But it all got serious when I saw myself typing in a search term for gay porn. Seeing the new images, I suddenly got very excited. I was confused. What followed was bingeing behaviour, big time. I could go up to 5-6 times a day and needed very short time to orgasm. After each orgasm, there was this huge hangover. What the hell was I doing?? I was anxious, but continued to binge, cravings for another ‘newly designed orgasm’ didn’t stop. Every relapse was my last one. These were very frustrating weeks. Why was this material suddenly so enticing, in such a short time period? I was masturbating to material that disgusted me before, and would still disgust me after I orgasmed.
[Age 23] Prior to rebooting I had no sensitivity in my penis and could barely maintain an erection for more than about 10 seconds. The “intercourse” if you could even call it that lasted a couple of minutes at most and I honestly couldn’t feel anything.
The last few days have been porn binges for 4-6 hours. I rushed home today just to watch porn. It’s interfering with my work and sleep schedules. I also sold out on a date with a decent girl I wanted to get to know just so I could look at porn instead. It did become more obvious that the transexual porn is unrelated to my sexuality. After spending 30+ hours over the past 5 days watching porn, transexual porn started to become boring! I began searching for other more disgusting and shocking stuff.
When I’m using a lot of porn, I’m more desperate with women – and more desperate for sex. I hate this feeling. It not only undermines the girls I interact with and makes my time with them unfufilling, but it’s just disrespectful to myself. Desperation is not a quality of the man I want to become. Looking back on previous behavior – it’s sad really. I know I’m not naturally that person (without porn, I don’t feel desperate for sex at all).
I think I became truly addicted to porn in the last 2 years during which time I have been mostly celibate. Had no idea I was addicted, which is funny considering I would spend hours a day in front of the computer watching increasingly novel video after video. If my internet was running slowly and I couldn’t watch, I would go into rages and fits. I would be able to do nothing else but sit and wait until the internet traffic calmed down. I shudder to think how much time I have wasted, but no more!
I was trying to figure out why I was lackluster with women. I explored giving up sugar, getting plenty of exercise, getting a job I felt proud of, trying to have hobbies that I thought might make girls think I was cool, learning martial arts, working out, thinking more positive thoughts, a whole raft of possible causes. None of it really moved the needle at all. After stopping PMO for 5 days I was like a different man – strong sex drive and motivation, desperate almost. Then there’s been a long period of re-sensitization which is still going on, but is definitely moving the needle.
I’ve once again had a massive porn binge this past week; an entire day was spent looking at porn, to the point that I formed an oedema on the left side of my penis. My whole shaft actually hurt once I was no longer erect, and it was very sensitive to the touch and to clothing for a day afterwards, and was damn near completely retracted.
I’m not a big porn users, but I’d say my masturbation issue is much graver than I realized. I have bruise-marks all over my dick because I twist the skin sideways with my hands. I cannot ejaculate while standing, nor can I ejaculate without masturbation. I also push my pelvis forward while masturbating to increase the pleasure, which may not be normal. Often after I ejaculate now the tip of my skin turns red and starts to hurt. For a while I used to jerk off with a shirt between my hand and penis, I guess as a weird form of lubricant… Problem is when I make direct contact with the skin I feel as though I’m damaging it with normal masturbation. It’s as though my penis is now very fragile. I used to get morning wood all the time, now it happens very irregularly. I virtually never get a stone-hard boner anymore, whereas I used to get it spontaneously, at inopportune times even. Sometimes I don’t even get hard when I need to pee, and often I can manage to ejaculate with a semi-hard penis. It even hurts a little to play with my balls. The worst part is that even when I hold out for a week, a lot of these problems (eg/ the bruising) remain, and when I ejaculate after a long period of abstinence, it hurts like hell, as though I’m holding back a huge load of semen.
I’m scared because I don’t want masturbation or porn to consume me. I’m scared because my masturbation habits and porn usage have been escalating to such a level that this behaviour is disgusting and I want to stop it. I don’t feel much, at all. 24 years old. I’m not a virgin, I’ve had plenty. I just masturbated. It’s 3pm in the afternoon. I feel like complete shit. Not guilt, or anything like that – I just feel completely unmotivated. I feel life has been drained from me. This is how I feel every time I post-masturbation. I feel like a piece of shit. Masturbation has taken over my life. I go to work, come home, make dinner and then masturbate until bed time, which is usually midnight. That’s 6 hours a day of masturbating. On the weekends, I spend closer to 10 hours a day masturbating. I have sex with real women, too, but I’m hooked on cybersex.
I am 28 years old and porn has been in my life now for about 12 years. I noticed a couple of years ago that I was becoming more and more withdrawn socially, not wanting to socialise and really completely lethargic towards life. In the past year this has got much worse. My friendships have suffered and I’m left feeling quite lonely at times. My last relationship was 5 years ago and now I look back and its clear PMO was a heavy factor in its failure (especially the ED problems). I now suffer severe anxiety approaching women I like.
Porn has affected me the same way it affects most, but here is the list as best as I can tell, and I may update this as I go along.
- Complete loss of morning wood
- Trouble sustaining or getting an erection while masturbating without porn
- Not 100% erect during sex, immediate loss of erection without penetration
- Having a strong desire to act out pornographic scenarios and acts during sex
- Completely absent libido
- A distorted opinion on how to sexually satisfy women
- Expecting my partner as well as myself to act like as a pornstar
- Lack of motivation due to guilt, depression, feeling of helplessness
- Exhaustion and fatigue, often lasting days after porn and masturbation binges
- Constant need to play with myself (essentially masturbate while flaccid)
- Social withdrawal and anxiety
- Non-satisfying or even enjoyable orgasms
- Massive decrease in emotional capacity, finding it difficult to really laugh, or get excited about something, or genuinely sad, etc
- Decrease in confidence, definite drop in the volume of my voice, no drive
- Inability to concentrate
- Short temper as a result of fatigue
- No energy, life, spontaneity, spark, whatever you want to call it
I can remember myself about one year and a half ago, reading a couple of articles on how internet porn was destroying young male’s libido, and laughing. Yes, I laughed. At that time, I was watching extreme hardcore porn all the time, and porn was becoming my only interest, but I could not realise that I had a problem. When, a few months later, I found the first girlfriend of my life and realised I had ED, I was astonished: how can I have ED??? What the hell is wrong with me? Why I am not feeling excited with a naked girl in front of me? It never, NEVER crossed my mind the possibility that my porn use could be the problem. Even after discovering Yourbrainonporn, it took me a few months before taking it for serious. It took me a few months to realise how wrong was the fact that instead of dating girls, for years I have masturbated to internet porn. Basically, the problem is that those who are not (for now) porn addicts find it hard to believe that porn can do any damage because they did not experience it themselves; and those who are porn addicts fail to recognise their situation until they realise that they have ED. But ED, as we know, is just the final stage of a gradual decline.
[Relapsed after months with no porn. At first, no symptoms.] Slowly but surely, my anxiety began to increase. My stress was up, energy down, confidence at a low point. I began being bothered by the littlest, silliest comments or looks that normally I would shrug off. When I saw any picture, woman, commercial even a little bit risque or remotely related to sex, my heart would begin to race.. an artificial dopamine rush. Even COMMERCIALS that were absolutely NOT meant to be sexual at all I was some how able to find something arousing in it.
For years I’ve suffered from mood swings, difficultly concentrating and ‘brain fog’. It’s as if over the years I’ve dumbed down. I always thought it could have been due to the years of cannabis misuse when I was younger, but now after a previous stint of abstinence I know that over-masturbation has been the cause. The most annoying thing is girls find me attractive (sorry if that sounds big headed lol) i regularly make out with girls its just i got a fear of taking it further and not being able to perform. I rarely get ‘real world’ erections. Its bizarre because i could be making out with a girl and not get an erection but i could simply browse and she a photo of her online and get an instant wood.
Before the reboot, I have to tell you folks that it was literally impossible for me to get an erection from a fantasy of a real life girl. It’s like porn numbed me down so badly that I couldn’t even get horny from imagining myself having sex with attractive girls in real life.
PIED cured: It’s true. Hang in there and you and your cock will be happy again. It may take a while. You have to be patient. I also had prostatitis due to jerking too much. That went away too when I stopped jerking 5 times a day. https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/age-38-ed-cured-increased-confidence-making-eye-contact-feeling-awesome-more-sociable
Most of these porn withdrawal symptoms occurred during a time in which I had no concept that I was suffering from porn withdrawal. I had simply given up porn, as was my usual custom when I start dating a new girl. Apparently, I had simply never been to this level of addiction before. Keep in mind that 90% of these symptoms were things I have NEVER experienced in my life. Also keep in mind that ALL of these symptoms have either been fully alleviated, or are significantly improved, by this point (13 days no porn/masturbation/orgasm):
- Anxiety – chest tightness, panic attacks, high heart rate and blood pressure·
- Feelings of impending doom, Depression to the point of suicidal thoughts·
- Chronic Fatigue symptoms·
- Inability to take pleasure in anything whatsoever – eating, reading, watching a movie, playing music or creating artwork (I am a musician and an artist)·
- Strange enjoyment of physical pain·
- Severe insomnia – total of about 18 hours of sleep over the course of three weeks·
- Increased urge to masturbate—up to 10 times in a day·
- Sexual fatigue – loss of libido, loss of interest in life, testicular and groin pain, but still increased urge to masturbate (figure that one out)·
- ADD· Incoherent speech·
- Digestive problems· Headaches
I did physical damage to my genitals. My scrotum started to develop veins. I went for an annual check up a year after I started PMO, and the doctor said I had varicose veins, and that they were due to masturbation.
It’s actually crazy how much fapping is making me feel fucking miserable.
I’m sick and tired of this shit – of relapsing, of wanting to change, of lying in bed post-wank feeling like a fucking loser, of watching my friends have real, intimate relationships, of watching others have fun one night hook-ups, of still being a virgin because of my fucking pathetic porn-induced ED, of being too scared to go after pretty much the girl of my dreams cos I know that even if I do get her I’ll just lose her like I lost my ex, all because of fucking P and fucking M and fucking O.
I have a good number of phobias. Leading a sheltered life allows you to have them, I (used to) fear wasps, bees, anything that sounds like a wasp or a bee, spiders, bugs, falling, pain, girls, and worst of all, contents rising from the stomach to the mouth (emetophobia). But since day 15/16, they’ve lessened exponentially. Bees, don’t even flinch, let alone sprint for cover. My emetophobia has improved the most, no panic attacks, no constant worry, even seeing that sort of thing didn’t bother me all that much.
I had been an addict to masturbation since I was 16 (I’m now 25). Addiction does not begin to describe what I had. Started with medical material and ended up with all kinds of weird porn. From 3-4 times a week to 8-9 times a day (my balls hurt so badly the next day)
My pmo/ed was so bad I thought I was asexual for several years. I was never attracted to women in real life because I had all the hotties I wanted degrading themselves for me online. Since I wasn’t attracted to real women I was in some kind of purgatory, where me being asexaul was the only thing that made sense. Then something happened and I woke up one day and said NO this has to change, I NEED a partner in my life, I want a woman to love and be loved, I want to be that special someone for someone, and her for me. Since then I’ve met my SO and am happier than I’ve ever been.
Binging takes so much out of me, every time I go through one I honestly don’t know if I’ll mentally recuperate. I feel like I lose myself, I fee like I lose my mind. I go from binging for hours, saying I need to stop, and 30 seconds later I’m right back at it. I will feel like I’m in a fog almost not entirely there, even in the experience of masturbating to porn. And the whole world around me will fade out. It’s like I get tunnel vision to the point where nothing even feels real. I don’t feel real; conversations don’t feel real; sounds seem distant. when the urge hits me, I actually don’t remember what happened, how I lost so much time. How sick I felt after not seeing the sun and fresh air for days, or not eating well for weeks. How much shame I would have from going to more disturbing porn, things that I wouldn’t have found remotely attractive becoming the norm.
It’s like a cycle, every time i masturbate hard, especially to porn, the next couple days I feel so needy and insecure about myself….Longest I have ever gone was 2 weeks. I relapsed man,y many time. The reason i just keep coming back to this no-PMO thing is that I just miss my “confident” self so much. That attractive confident guy usually appears around day 7 =D…..But it is so hard to resist the temptation of PMO.
For years, I used to think I fapped because I was horny. I used to think that if I could get a girl to have sex with me, I wouldn’t have to fap. So I would justify fapping by reasoning that I’ll just stop fapping when I get a girlfriend/sex buddy/wife. But I realized that I recently I passed up having sex with a woman I work with twice! And then I fucking went home and fapped while fantasizing about having sex with her! The most messed up thing about this is that I didn’t realize how fucked up this was until yesterday. Because if I was actually fapping because I wanted to have sex, I would have just gone through with it, right? It dawned on me that I was really fapping because I have to. I’m fucking addicted and I need to stop.
I used to get nosebleeds all the time, every day and every time I blew my nose. After doing giving up porn/masturbation for some time I noticed that my random nose bleeding had stopped. Always when I relapsed, I had nose bleeding.
I got into a relationship eight years ago, and that rocked for first 5 years — problems started after that. We were long-distance, because of her job, and the isolation and lack of closeness drove me back into PMO big time. I also discovered that interactive video chat was a massive high. So it went for a year or so. After that, when we were back in the same place again, I realised that I had deeply screwed up my brain. I had lost all confidence and my personal attraction had diminished drastically. I could feel that because I was a really confident and social person before, and that all had started disappearing. It also, needless to say, affected our relationship. I didn’t get aroused anymore by anything at all as well. Which sucked big time.
I feel very antsy and just horrible when I binge. This sucks. Just not bothering with anyone at home either. Avoiding conversation. “Do whatever you want. Enjoy yourself. I’m going to sleep; I’m exhausted.”
The effects of PMO on me were: lost power of will drastically, felt depressed, frustrated, disappointed, didn’t want to talk to people, because I felt so miserable and ashamed of myself. It’s like I suspected they knew about my situation and thus felt paranoic. I usually don’t go out much, but in the days of PMO I spent almost all the day inside my bedroom with the door closed and sometimes skipped some meals. I was unmotivated to do any little thing, felt that I needed a female in my life, but it’s just so difficult for me to go out and try to seduce a girl. In that period, I virtually only listened to music (I’m a metalhead) and ate. I barely exercised and when I felt depressed I just ate either too much or very little. I’m a terrible procrastinator. During the last month, when I masturbate to porn I find it very difficult to get really turned on and when I ejaculated, I felt little pleasure. I don’t think I have ED, but porn has for sure numbed me. It must have been occuring lately, because I have been very tired, sleepy and without much motivation, so I basically rendered to PMO, because I didn’t have a better thing to do.
It went to softcore porn to hardcore porn. I would look at porn and masturbate for over 3 hours a day. It was all I could think about during the day. I did it to the point of becoming raw and bleeding. That didn’t even stop me. I did this for probably 5 years almost every day. I would maybe go a few days without looking at it occasionally. I would always say to myself afterwards that I was going to quit and it wasn’t right but the next night I would always justify it and do it again.
I had bad anxiety problems, and depression was gradualy getting to a stage where it was a problem and I was starting to feel hopeless. I also really struggled with intimacy, to a point where I didn’t feel comfotable being touched by another person. I have no idea why. I really struggled with eye contact and carried a feeling of shame with me, which until finding this site I didn’t associate with PMO. Now, my mood is really consistent, about a 6 I’d say. Eye contact is so much easier, work is so much better and I even think I’m in line for a coming promotion.
About three days ago I began to masturbate, and about half way to my climax I began to get the most painful headache I have ever felt, which was super concentrated and the dead back of my head. I figure what the hell, I’ll wait and do it later. Trouble is I got the exact same problem. I forced myself through it, and the headache that resulted lasted for about 15 hours. I tried again the next day, the same pain appeared. Now, I know the pain will probably eventually go away, but if I’m going to go however long it takes to get rid of the pain, why not try to stop my habits? I’m nearing two times a day being my average, and it is getting out of control. Starting
I have been watching porn for as long as the internet has been around. I am 22 years old now. It has not affected my professional success – I am actually quite successful in that arena, but the rest of my life is bland. No woman at the moment and none in sight. The things actually worth living for have been dulled. Honestly speaking, the longest I have gone without masturbating to porn has been about 1.5 weeks. I have attempted to stop many times but fail. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about some kind of instant gratification – whether it be porn, drugs, alcohol, video games etc…
I’ve been sexually active for 12 years. Been fapping for around 15. I’ve never, not once, without manual help (and even then not as often as you’d think) gotten off with a woman. Imagine how much of a mindfook that is to a chick… That she’s not good enough to get you off. Imagine how much of a mindfook that is for ME, this hot chick can’t get me off… wtf ever, I’ll go iron-grip it for an hour, right? Eff that. I’d trade it all back in for being able to bust a nut ONCE with a woman. Just once, and I’d die happy. In short, I quit because I could be with a woman, unable to get it up. Or unable to finish. Or not gleaning any kind of stimulation/satisfaction/pleasure from sex.
You see more and more people worried about penis size or having extremely high expectations of girls doing fantasy sex acts because of what they have seen in porn.
I had a friend who travelled around the Middle East and South America for a year with whom I talked about this issue, and he gave me a weird look, like he knew exactly what I was talking about, yet had never heard anyone actually say it. This friend said he didn’t look at porn for the entire time, since he was couchsurfing/staying with friends throughout most of it and didn’t have a chance. He said after he got back he started looking at porn again and felt very shitty for a while afterwards, and his social game declined as a result.
(90-day report) When I think about sex and fantasize it’s about real sexual encounters and real women. And when I go out in public I take much greater notice of women’s beauty. And the arousal I get is not the same as the engulfing porn-buzz that was really not the urge for sex, but the urge to get behind a computer screen with my pants around my ankles.
(Age 40) Other benefits of nofap I’ve seen; my moods have improved, I’m not depressed all the time like I was, I’m less socially awkward. Physically, I feel a million times better; sitting locked in a rigid position fapping in front of the computer for hours every week wrecked my back and joints, so from the perspective alone I’m much better. Plus working out, I’m back to my college weight. And I have an SO now in a long term relationship, my first, and it’s AMAZING!
There were times where I got to the point that I didnt want to live anymore, you know. All the headaches, shaky hands, loss of concentration and a ton of other harmful effects from masturbation really made my life so miserable.
I’ve developed the urge to choke/pull hair/man handle/be really mean dom/BDSM etc., but in real life I haven’t got a mean bone in my body, and am pretty anxious/socially awkward/laid back/non-violent/non-agressive. This stuff used to freak me out. Now I love it and find myself wanting to do stuff like that to women. Even having sex with new gf, I want to choke her a bit. (Ex loved it luckily for me). Will these go away? I want them to, I feel like they’re going to seriously get in the way of me ever being satisfied, since I sort of feel like I can’t O or get excited enough if I can’t.
Imagine being addicted to heroin, and then giving that person an endless supply for free. Needless to say, after I got highspeed, it went downhill quick. I became a recluse, horrible loner, and terrified of human contact. Whenever things got rough at home, I’d retreat into the strange relationships I had developed with my favorite pornstars. With POV scenes, it’s almost like you were there. As the dopamine becomes dull, you have to seek out more (ultimately worse) porn. When I started, the simple TV-cut porn did it for me. Before I quit, I needed to see fast and furious hate fucking before I could even get hard. After so much time spent in smut, I began to feel sleazy, and this lead to an even smaller self-esteem. How can you look a pretty girl in the eye (or anyone) after you know you just watched a girl get gangbanged by 13 dudes? How can you hang out with a happy smile at family holidays or birthdays knowing you’re tired as hell from staying up too late watching porn videos?
For the first 7 years of masturbation I had no big problem, but to be honest my body started to weaken itself little by little. After masturbating I had this lower back pain, I felt dizzy. And whenever I started having sex with a girl the back pain gets me or my penis goes limp. My total copulatory ED started when I discovered porn. Once addicted, I escalated rapidly to all kinds of porn. I noticed an inability to focus in school, feeling sleepy as soon as I started reading my book. I became soo irritable and aggressive with my friends and girlfriends.
I was talking to my brother about how boob shots in 80’s movies (in the 80’s) used to do it for guys looking to whack to. Now you need the most vile shiit to get off because everything else isn’t satisfactory. And this is prevalent in kids that are like 12 years old. Yikes!
[Mid 30s] For the last 3 or 4 years I have been using internet porn sites pretty much every day, sometimes masturbating 3 times a day. My symptoms are: 1) numb penis (a girl actually went down on me a few months ago and I couldn’t feel a thing) 2) I ejaculate virtually nothing 3) I get more turned on by my own fantasy than by actual women 4) weak erections 5) can only ejaculate when I use my own hands- I feel nothing if a girl tries to do it for me.
Last year it became really drastic, I was doing it almost every day for like 5-6 hours, sometimes longer. Even when I had a chance of sex with my girlfriend I preferred pornography. I remember when I would have 2 erections daily, and recently I haven’t been able to have more than one, but most of the times I had no desire for sex. That was about when I figured out I need help.
In the past I noticed beauty, of course, but never FELT a DESIRE to be with a girl. Porn for me was where I directed all my sex drive. Everything sexual related for me WAS porn. I could never think about me, this guy, with this d*ck having real sex with a real girl. Then after a few days in the process, I just felt like it was the most natural thing to do. Hell yeah is possible for me to have sex. Hell yeah there’s a lot of girls out there wanting to have it with me. Suddenly, self defeating thoughts seems so stupid and time wasting. In the past I could never understand and relate to most males that I met… I always felt like they’re kind of jerks and didn’t know how to treat a woman “nicely.” Now, I finally felt a bit of what they felt. And it’s awesome.
I would do 5 ejaculations a day sometimes 8 or 9 or 10! That was when I was younger at 13, and also even as I got older at 14, 15, 16, and even not that long ago. My body was not in the mood at all for sex but I just turned on hardcore pornography then forced it again for a couple times that day about 2 or 3 a day. I still have a searing pain I call it my “line of pain” where I can feel from my butthole up to my perineum through my scrotum and out of the tip of my penis. A pain that is sharp when it hits me. Oh yeah I am not sexually active at all and 100% healthy according to the doctor. My own personal feeling is that my urethra is inflamed from excessive ejaculations. That is how much I damaged myself. I also feel that my prostate is swollen and that somehow is affecting my pain. Did I burn a hole in my body that will never repair itself from my hundreds of forced ejaculations that now set a fire through the middle of my legs?
(reply on forum) I never had wet dreams until I was much older, I forget exactly when I had my first one as it was so long ago. I masturbated so much the tanks were empty. I know exactly the pain you’re feeling , think its time to take a break from masturbating. I am NOT a doctor but here are my thoughts. Semen is acidic so can irritate your pipes. I saw the doctor as it felt like I was peeing glass but was told I may have the clap. It cleared by itself when I stopped masturbating and it’s rare for men to get urine infections. I read somewhere, try not to pee 30 mins before or after an orgasm. This reduced my irritation, but I have reduced the period after as feel it clears the tubes. Drinking plenty of water and reducing caffeinated drinks including coke etc did the trick. Also the act of masturbating can hurt your dick and make it sore, especially if your grip is as good as mine. After a good binge I think the orgasm muscle round the prostate gets tired and sore. Well mine has in the past. Again, a break solved it.
Has anyone else noticed that they slur or stutter when speaking after they Fap? I can’t speak well until after about 3-4 weeks of NoFap. Until then I typically slur my words or jumble up my words when trying to talk to other people.
For the last 23 years I have suffered ill health, colds, flu, viruses, almost constant swollen glands. Also with this aching joints and muscles, fatigue, social anxiety, brain fog, bad memory and depression. One thing I had going for me was my will power, I always knew I could be a better person, accomplish more, create more things, inspire more people. I had seen crumbs of evidence but always felt hindered by my ill health. I tried many many things before I came across no fap, the the majority of my life I have been In denial that I could ever live without porn let alone masturbation and yet simply ridding myself of these 2 things has given me health beyond anything I have experienced before in my life and confidence/ social skills that have made me literally pinch myself while witnessing come out of me. http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/2×1306/no_fap_made_me_well_again_thank_you_no_fap/
Spoke with a friend I used to share porn with back in HS and another close friend. They all have the same experiences. I think that if this many people have porn-related ED…we at YBOP are truly the first examples of curing an addiction. One which will eventually be highly documented and cause a rift in the way we see sexuality through our increasingly electronic lens.
I often manage two or three weeks of not watching porn but then some little image, almost always harmless under normal circumstances, sparks something in my brain. Then I find a way to escalate from that image. Then from that image. Until finally I just give up and dive in, and in a matter of two or three days after the first sexual picture I’m as deep as I ever was, going to it straight after work, before bed, late late into the night. And every time I finish I want to bury my head and all I can think is how much I hate porn and I swear it off forever, only to fall again within a day. I’ve been leaving my computer at my parents’ but sometimes I need it with me and it takes only a few days for me to fall again. I once quit porn and masturbation for nine months by removing literally every single indulgence of any kind from my life. It was incredibly difficult and I haven’t achieved anything anywhere near that since then. I get the feeling now that you can’t quit forever, and that it’s a choice between suffering from cravings but feeling better about yourself or suffering from indulgence and hating yourself, but at least not fighting it anymore. I hate porn with a passion. I know that when I watch it I’m withdrawn and incredibly irritable. Want to break my computer in half and tell everyone around me (including my parents) to lock their internet connections. I’m getting a smartphone soon and am afraid that will be the devil in my hands calling my name. I have dealt with drug addiction in the past but I have to say that even though it nearly killed me I have never hated anything about myself and addiction as much as I have hated porn. When I quit drugs and alcohol I went to rehab for four months and a halfway house for three months. Would you expect a drug addict to stay clean if you sent him home the same hour he came to rehab, and at home he had a briefcase packed with an infinite supply of cocaine and he had to open this briefcase every single day for other purposes?
I have been unconsciously unaware of my 13-year porn addiction until last weekend it clicked….Through the years I was an absolute sex maniac. I could have sex every night with no hiccups….The last 8 years have been the worst; I was depressed, anxious, and angry, confused and didn’t know what was going on with me….In the last year I have noticed my erections have been really weak and I have premature ejaculation.
I quit porn on my own because I was diagnosed with epididymitis, for the second time. Epididymitis is “inflammation of the tube at the back of the testicle that stores and carries sperm” and is extremely painful. I think I got epididymitis because I was binging way more frequently. Let me just say that there is nothing more embarrassing then going to the Doctor because of ball pain, and then getting tested for STI’s. Your Doctor asking “when was the last time you were sexually active”, and you reply, “never, I’m a virgin.”
Get weird withdrawal symptoms after masturbating. I find it very difficult to describe, as there really aren’t words to describe what I feel. It’s a weird whole-body sticky sweet feeling that includes apathy, extreme irritation, impatience, ADHD, brain fog and the compulsion to masturbate. I even have a name for this, “the hornys”. Horny isn’t really the right word because when I really am horny, I am socially outgoing and happy. The hornys are more like an extreme compulsion to MO, and do nothing else. When I was younger I would always break out with acne when I had these feelings. I don’t care they say about masturbation not causing acne, in my case I can tell you with almost 100% certainty that it did, and still can. (I’m almost 40.)
In the past, particularly if I was masturbating a second (or third) time in one day, that I would get post-ejaculation pelvic and prostate pain.
I am personally a 27 y/o male. I was an extremely high-performing academic and sportsperson, before being introduced to unlimited internet at age 13. My life changed; my grades dropped, I stopped reading books, playing sport, socializing. Since then my life has revolved around videogames, internet porn, and news websites. I’m only now slowly reversing the process.
(Young woman) Do you know how much easier papers and finals are when you aren’t taking porn breaks every couple of hours?
After my last very tumultous, and toxic relationship I would rub one out almost everyday a couple times a day. I ended up losing feeling down there, had to deathgrip stroke to orgasm, and it didn’t even really feel to good. I used to smoke alot of weed a couple years ago and rubbing one out whilst being high was the only way that it felt adequate. I think this fries your dopamine receptors even more because you are essentially stacking drugs to make them more potent. 30 Day Report – Full Benefits + Resources I Found Helpful
Today, I thought back, and realized how pervasive this problem has been for a very long time. I’m 21 and I’ve spent just about every day I’ve had alone since I was about 13 masturbating to porn, often for several hours a day. It’s ruined friendships, relationships, and opportunities at work and school.
I’ve masturbated to fantasies for so long, it’s difficult for me to respond in a normal manner when I’m actually with a woman. I have to overlay one of my fantasies in my head, even while I’m with her, to maintain an erection or to eventually ejaculate. I can’t do either otherwise.
What I believe is that often people are coming to prefer toys/porn over relationships or the old fashioned roll in the sack as their brains grow numb. But they don’t realize it as long as they’re not in relationship. There’s no obvious conflict to make a problem evident. If this is even partially true, then maybe there’s a huge problem out there that lurks in the shadows. Like millions of people having a virus that hasn’t made them feel sick yet? Sounds like sci-fi.
During the days of heavy porn use, I had reached the lowest point in my life. I was totally fucked up (crying, suicidal thoughts, almost dropped out of college). Why do I KNOW I’ll be pornfree for the rest of my life?
The wife is really distraught as they went to Mexico for two weeks, she toured and hit the beach alone and her husband stayed in the room, in the dark and watched porn for two weeks, apparently that is all he does now.
I started looking at porn, on a regular basis, about five years ago. First there was the beautiful women, then the HC porn, then the weird insertions, then the transvestites, then critters, then the hermaphrodites, then the teen porn, then the younger models and now prison (soon to go). As the years passed I became less and less interested in masturbating and more and more interested in “novelty” searching. Towards the end, I couldn’t sit at a computer without searching. I, maybe, masturbated once every two months (in the shower) but viewed porn every day. Looking back, I just don’t see how I could have been so ignorant as to not recognize that I had a problem.
These days, after ejaculation, I usually feel low energy, shallow breath, weak legs (no energy in legs to walk long dist), DEPRESSION, low confidence, worry, FRUSTRATION, don’t have the feeling to connect to others (prefer being alone), weak voice, big appetite.
I grew up being a very tender individual, with very little aggressiveness. I’m sure a lot of this stemmed from always being able to release my sexual energy if I started to feel frustrated. If I saw an attractive girl who I wanted to get to know, instead of talking to her I just had to find the nearest bathroom. I could head home and load up a porn video. Now if I don’t talk to an attractive girl or make a bad decision regarding a girl, I can’t run away to my laptop or the bathroom to relieve myself. I know it sounds gross but that was my life not too long ago. If I saw a girl at work or in the library, I wouldn’t even think about approaching her. I would just run straight to porn. It was pathetic. I still don’t approach as much as I need to as a single guy, but at least I’m feeling the pain of not trying instead of running away. Not wasting your sexual energy when you feel uncomfortable will make you feel more vital and full of energy.
A few minutes ago as I was walking down the street I was thinking about just how drained I used to feel all the time. It didn’t matter how much sleep I got or how little I worked, I always felt drained. Now (27 days) I never feel drained, not even before falling asleep. I wasn’t just drained of energy, I was physically drained of, well… you get the idea.
Hell, the symptoms were there. I could only get it up when she was naked, oral sex wasn’t stimulating to me anymore (I could only orgasm when I jerked myself off) and the only women I had in my life were those who did all the work for me. Now I’m a good looking guy so I’ve had some women that way, but I always felt a bit weird when it came to pursuing them sexually (apathy). I remember girls grinding their asses on me but it didn’t turn me on or women giving me eye contact and I felt scared.
Lately I’ve been watching porn daily again, and I have low energy, I’m lazy, and I lack any sign of courage. Yesterday I was out with friends. Twin brunettes. Very tall (like so tall that only few men in the club were taller than them, me being one of them). Really hot. They’re having fun, laughing, even kissing each other on the lips. We’re standing close to them, and I keep getting strong eye contact from one of them (or both – I couldn’t tell them apart :P). Didn’t approach because I just felt this strong sense of inadequacy. I didn’t feel that strength and masculinity that I did feel after laying off porn for several weeks.
I’ve reached the level where even usual pr0n I always liked and used, which was already kinky, wasn’t even close to enough for an erection… stuff i need is not at all related to any kind of sex.
The past 3-4 days I haven’t gotten anything done…. I’ve just watched porn for up to 8 hours a day, and I can’t take it anymore! I think I’m ready to have a go at stopping porn altogether for a while.
So I’ve experienced a constant buzz of brain fog for the past several years. Essentially started to drift in towards my last year of High School all the way until now (~persistent for the past 9 years). At times I wondered if it was actually brain fog or if it was just actually me being, well, me. But when the brain fog did wear off in those off, randomly occurring instances in the past few years, it felt great. Felt like I was the “real me” again, capable of doing anything, and everything. It would last only a day or so, I’d have incredible energy, be able to connect well with everyone, and truly feel alive. Then the brain fog would wear in again and zombie mode would initiate. I’d go back to the lazy, droning, unmotivated “shell” of a real person for a period of time until I’d get another break in the clouds. So I’ve always known that there was something “wrong” in my perception ability, and would only really notice it when I’d be on the other side of the fence; when the brain fog would clear up. Recently (11 days now), I’ve stopped fapping and looking at porn (I was the 1 or 2 a day type), and have noticed that the brain fog is gone. Not faded out, not just thinner, but GONE. I breathe, and feel it. I see people, and look in their eyes. I know where I am, what I’m doing, what time it is, and what I have to do in the next hours, days, weeks. I can stay focused for much longer periods of time and feel motivated to do tons of things at once. I have a skip in my step and really look around and see a whole different world.
I want my life back so badly. I wanna be attracted just by the sight and the touch of a beautiful woman again. I want to be able to make love to my girlfriend without ED. I wanna quit porn and be myself.
What is happening in my brain that explains why I can’t fall asleep after masturbating with porn? I’ve had many nights I didn’t sleep at all. When i masturbate using a girl in my imagination, I sleep with no problem. I am very excited and after that I am tired, my horniness is satisfied and I fall asleep. But when I masturbate to porn, it’s like my dopamine level never shuts down and keeps me excited the whole night. It’s amazing, and quite unbelievable that brain can differ that much in its outcome. I mean absolutely amazing. I decided to find a girlfriend. I remember that after actually having sex it was the same sleep outcome as masturbating to my imagination—more amazing with actual sex of course 😉
Have looked at porn for about 7 years. Escalated in frequency and urges. I know this is hurting my life badly. I’m at an age where should be socializing and going around with girls but I’ve noticed that my behavior is similar to an addict’s. I feel desensitized, helpless, and out of control. I’ve tried to stop so many times but every time I’ve failed.
It’s better than before. I would get crazy headaches when I masturbated to Internet porn, having no idea why.
I actually used to have trouble remembering the faces of girls when I was a teenager. That was when I was PMO’ing like a mad man. Must have passed without me noticing though because I don’t have that problem anymore.
The appeal behind porn doesn’t need explaining, and I got hooked, plain and simple. Nothing is better than forgetting all your problems and indulging in a little 5-on-1 with your favourite pornstar. This often took up entire days and nights, and yeah, to the extent that I have a small bruised/dark section on the tip of my penis.
Glancing across the classroom I noticed one of my good friends was falling asleep. He had a very hard time keeping his eyes open and his head was bopping up and down. The last time I experienced this, was when I was deep into my PMO addiction, PMO-ing maybe about 3 times a day on the regular. Come to think of it, this dude mentioned that he does watch a lot of porn. Yeah, from my experience, the main cause of low energy amongst young males today isn’t a lack of exercise or proper diet (although they do play a significant role), it is overexposure to pornography and frequent masturbation. I knew what the issue was as soon as I looked across the room.
When I was masturbating 2-3 times everyday there came a time eventually I noticed that I wasn’t getting a full erection, that I was only lasting 2-3 minutes before orgasm, that I had to vigorously stimulate myself physically, etc. I also was not able to get an erection standing up, only when seated or laying on my back.
Over the years I’d get occasional hemmorhoids, but never bothered to assume there was a connection with heavy porn use. It didn’t feel particularly bad during PMO sessions, so I didn’t think much of it. I’d seen a doctor about them (they are really painful, as anyone who has had anything more than a mild case can tell you), and the conclusion was just something like “some people get them, some people don’t”. My causes tend to be certain kinds of heavy lifting. So, I haven’t had them in a long, long time, at least six months. I also had a relapse about a week ago, including a couple “binge sessions”. They came roaring back. I can’t say for sure that there is a connection, but it sure seems likely. All of that stuff is connected! Blood flow, muscles, this pushing on that, etc… it is hard to pin down the exact science, but it sure makes sense. I did a quick internet search and haven’t found any hard studies, but I have found a few anecdotal accounts. While sex or MO lying down doesn’t seem to do anything, it seems to be MO while SITTING (i.e. in front of a computer) that aggravated the problem for a lot of guys. I don’t know about you guys, but I’d rather be hit in the chest with a spade shovel than have a case of hemorrhoids, so I’ve found quite the motivator here.
While I was hooked on porn I was that guy who was walking around like a zombie. Never participated in conversations and never really cared about what other people said. Plus my social skills were like a 16-year old boy. They sucked! During my 10 years of addiction, porn actually led to more types of addiction. I started with porn, got hooked on candy and junk food to eat after my porn and masturbation sessions. Followed by gambling addiction (poker). The porn addiction actually led to me getting fatter (I was thin before) and poorer because I had no chance against the sharks playing poker professionally. Soon I had problems paying for food, clothes etc. This addiction is one of the worst you can get, I think. I call it a silent addiction because you may go through your entire life without people seeing what you struggle with. It has the same effect on the brain as cocaine and heroin in some ways. Yet it is 100% available at any time, and free. You can have your “drug” anytime you are in front of a computer. Sit there alone in your house all silently. This differs very much from drug addicts because they have to do something illegal to get it. You have to know people; you have to go out to buy it; it costs money. Most drug addicts end up in the wrong lane of life pursuing illegal activities to be able to pay for their addiction. So they get picked up by society and the police and get help from there. We porn addicts do not. That is why I call it a silent addiction. What makes porn addiction worse than drugs is that a drug addict can go through few weeks of rehabilitation in a clinic and suffer through the withdrawal effects during that short period of time—while we porn addicts have the porn images burned into our memory.
When I started rebooting I wasnt sure if I was really an addict, but now it’s clear. When I was about to relapse to porn yesterday, my hands were shaking and I already had a dopamine release. Think psych experiment with the dogs and the bell. I was conditioned and the old paths were lighting up.
When dial-up internet arrived, I would download the 30-second clips that were so prominent, watch them on repeat. I didn’t realise it was a drug. I was masturbating trying to improve my erections, or so I thought. I had enough porn bookmarks on my browser that if they stacked up one on one, they’d give the Empire State Building a run for its money in terms of height. Broadband came along and the emergence of the Tube websites which to my continued lack of understanding, provide free porn, full movies, seemingly endlessly. It is like a kid being given access to free sweets all day – every day. Years of my life have been wasted as I’ve spent so much time everyday on the internet, mainly for porn. Edging everyday, for hours, with so many windows of porn open that my computer regularly froze, much to my sexual frustration.Rebooting the computer and looking for more vids was just more excuse to waste more time and find new thrilling scenes. Of course, I’ve forayed into basically every category of porn, barring anything illegal. I would also like to empathize with a lot of guys I have read who mention not even getting an erection whilst masturbating. I’ve experienced that quite a lot and it is in reality, a truly saddening and helpless feeling when doing so. When I think back to it now, what was the point? The gloom afterwards and lack of energy and vigour would overwhelm me as a person.
I have wasted 8 years on porn. It was only when losing my virginity did I realize how much porn and fapping deceived me. The fact that I conditioned myself to only respond to pleasure from my right hand really ruined it. Sure I lasted forever but did I feel enormous physical pleasure? Nope. That was my realization to stop.
(Age 32) Throughout my 20 years of use, I probably have not gone more than 7 days at any point without looking at some sort of porn. I have thought about trying to stop in the past but rationalized that I didn’t need to by telling myself “All guys look at porn and most of them are fine so what is the point of stopping. I’m not doing myself any harm.” Boy was I wrong. I did not fully realize this until 4 days ago when I stumbled upon a website discussing the topic of porn-induced ED. As I was reading about this, I thought to myself “Oh my god, this is me!” Typically what would happen is I would meet a girl I liked, sex would be OK for the first couple months and as time went on I would find it difficult to maintain an erection during sex until eventually I would not even be able to get and erection at all. I would chalk this up to the fact that my partners weren’t attractive enough and therefore it was time to move on and try another at which point I would break up with the girl. I destroyed numerous relationships with this thought process without ever realizing the true cause of my ED. The fact is all of my ex girlfriends were very attractive and it wasn’t them at all, it was my problem the entire time.
I was tired of being a loser. I was tired of waking up at noon, jerking off all day, dressing like a bum and eating shitty food. Women weren’t attracted to me, and when I did sleep with a woman it was such a poor performance that she wouldn’t return my calls. I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried having sex with a 30% hard on, but it’s a nightmare – you’re MUCH smaller, you’re soft and you will last for over an hour. Although lasting for an hour might seem cool to some guys, it’s pretty pathetic when you’re trying to push a small soft dick into a woman that’s clearly not enjoying it. It finally got to the point where she just told me to stop. As you can imagine, I went home feeling like a loser. In fact, I didn’t just feel like a loser, I knew I was a loser.
Porn (and any and all erotic images on the internet) can only engage two senses at most, sight and possibly hearing. I think that this perhaps trains people (especially men I would imagine) to expect to get aroused only using sight and deadens other senses. I always insisted that the lights be on when I was having sex since there was no possible way I could get even marginally aroused without some visual stimulation from the woman.
Since I was 11 years old , I really don’t know what it feels to not have masturbated even for 4 days.Since I first experienced it, I have done it 3 or 4 Times daily! I want to Feel what is it like to be with so much Vital force and energy.I have experience this while masturbating every day: My body feels empty, and like an empty whole in my back.My skin feels like burned. (All my body skin and face) Feet hurt , bones hurt. Creativity shuts off for a while. No Energy at all and just want to sleep. No sexual Energy, so No girlfriend since my body doesn’t need it. (But I want to) Less sociable than all the other guys who have so much energy and testosterone floating around.My face has no glow.
What I’ve found scary throughout my struggle with porn is the lack of emotion, and that despite knowing I shouldn’t be doing it (lack of a better expression), I still do it, feeling both excited and numb.
(Day 59 of recovery) I used to get excited for my girlfriend to leave so I could masturbate to porn. How sick is that? I used to get no excitement for sex. I had low sensivity and no libido, except for extreme spikes when looking at porn. I preferred digital over the real thing, probably because it was the only time I felt any sexual excitement. I had a really good sexual encounter with my girlfriend over the weekend, and I woke up incredibly horny yesterday and today. Normally, when I get aroused, I desire looking at porn and jerking off. Instead, for the first time in my life, I was craving actual sexual interaction with my girlfriend. It was a really invigorating realization, and I’m excited to have arrived at this point in “rebooting”.
[And, from a former wife] My ex told me that he knew porn was an “addiction” for him. He used that term, and he said he wanted to stop and that because he couldn’t – porn had “ruined his life.” He also showed me a scar from masturbating to the point of bleeding because he was unable to stop. He said porn made him want to cheat all the time, and made him constantly fantasize about “nasty” sex with strangers, and young (teen) girls. The girls on some sites he viewed were so young that they did not yet have breasts. Pornography lead him to seek out in real life the graphic sex he was viewing online, and he ended up seeking escorts because of the ads that went along with the porn. He was also soliciting underage girls advertising their “adult” services online. He increasingly wanted to do what he saw, and he began treating all women like they were “submissive” (a big buzz word in porn and escorts ads) objects, including me. He would become agitated, irritable and mean when he could not look at porn because I was home, and he would become so angry and abusive due to frustration that I would unwittingly give him what he wanted by leaving. He would also abandon me places and run home and get online. He routinely had unprotected sex too – not thinking of reality or consequences like abortion, and STDs.
Fapping completely numbs you to the outside world. It convinces you that no girl will ever love you and that fapping is the only thing you have (it’s actually the opposite). When a girl flirts with you, you are totally ignorant and refuse to believe it. That’s how worthless you feel.
The numbing effects have been quite severe. I had gotten so used to jerking myself hard, that eventually I even stopped getting erections from just watching porn. Often I wasn’t even fully hard while masturbating and I developed this “rhythm” of masturbating for a few minutes, then read some unrelated websites as my arousal would drop, then continue masturbating, repeating this until orgasm [‘edging’].
I’m a straight guy who enjoys seeing nude and pornographic images and videos of women posing and having sex, as many of many of my male friends do. I am not sure they do it for up to 3 hours at a time though. But I realize that for some reason or reasons, I feel like garbage later (not because of the chaffing). Mentally and physically I feel good for a few hours. But then I feel so worn out mentally, sometimes like my IQ has been cut in half and I can’t think straight. If I do this late at night, the effects the next day are much worse. I know it somehow adversely affects my sleeping since I wake up early in the morning with explicitly sexual dreams and I can’t rest and fall back asleep. This never happens if I simply masturbate without looking at porn at the same time, or after I have intercourse with my girlfriend. It does NOT happen even if I do oral sex on my girlfriend and spend a lot of time staring at her private parts either. Obviously, the “cure” to not feeling this way is for me to stop looking at porn, but I want to be able to enjoy it in moderation without feeling so bad later. Overall, it feels more akin to being hungover after drinking a lot the night before – I have bad sleep, unclear thoughts, headache, and a lack of physical and mental ambition. It happens every time, so I call it a “pornographic hangover.” I have never used drugs, so I can’t compare it to that, but given the descriptions of that kind of “hangover” from some friends of mine, the hangover might be similar. I wonder if looking at porn like I do somehow tricks my mind and body into thinking that there are flocks of fornicating women to be had around, and urges the guy to go find them rather than sleeping normally.
Who else feels emotions less because of porn?
[Discussion on forum] It’s not even just the good things, sometimes you don’t even feel pain when you should which actually sucks. I’ve seen a few people mention this, but not that many, and for me this is one of the worst things I’ve had to go through. I was just wondering how many other people experienced it or if it’s just an extreme thing?——–I felt a lot more emotion when I had Dialup compared to having broadband.————————-It’s common. The numbing effect of porn & masturbation is real, and it’s why many go through some pretty unexpected and extreme emotional mood swings during the NoFap reboot. You’re suddenly not using fapping to cope and escape from feelings, so you have to face reality head on.—————–The long road back to being Human.
When my friends were out flirting and dating girls in high school, I was at home PMO’ing until the skin on my weewee got ripped and bled. Believe it or not, I once had a time when I almost got an infection because I had ripped the skin during PMO. It was so painful. I couldn’t go to the doctors. I put polysporin on it and bandaged it up. Yet I still couldn’t stop PMO’ing. I was PMO’ing my bandaged weewee.
All those days of loneliness and wondering why I couldn’t have somebody had everything to do with obsessive porn use. I would spend hours and hours watching it. 6 hours, 8 hours, the whole day. If I had a day off, I would have a “morning session” – whenever I woke up to lunch time, and then an afternoon session where I watched the rest of the day. During this time, I craved so much to be loved and to love. To have someone. I didn’t have a girlfriend in college. I didn’t come close. My friends were always perplexed why. I’m friendly, outgoing, and charismatic. I’m good-looking, and there were always girls around me. Clearly they liked me. I remember several of them making excuses to be around me. Their looks and glances barely registered. There was a girl I sat next to in class who strongly implied she wanted to go out. I couldn’t respond. And the whole time I thought something was wrong with me. I just felt like I couldn’t connect with them. It destroyed my life.
Started out porn at 12. Now, I’m 22. Have suffered some E.D due to the habit. During the past few months I also started suffering some physiological effects of this habit in the form of shaky hands and muscle tremors all over my body. In the 10 days since I stopped, this has reduced significantly, and my feeling of well being is greatly improved. I’ve been talking to a few girls recently so I might have sex on the road to recovery and I might not, but my main aim is to not masturbate or watch porn.
Ive also realized that porn has made me much more critical on my wife when it comes to how she looks, how into sex she gets , how she performs, and so on and so on. In the past I would actually get so angry if my wife didn’t get excited about the idea of sex… and to my shame, I would sometimes look at my wife (who is marginally over weight) and feel quite disgusted and even cheated. My thoughts would be along the lines of – “how can she just let herself go like that – knowing that I am devoted to just having sex with her for the rest of my life” – that train of thought completely also fueled my porn and masturbation, I kinda felt justified in a way. My porn addiction just really didn’t allow me to express my emotional tenderness to my wife. Often after a porn binge I would not even want to touch my wife. For some reason – after watching porn – I almost felt like I had been dunked in disgusting oil and was covered with the stuff. Almost felt like she could see through me – and that made me act even more rebellious. Often being rude with her for no reason – and not wanting to even really get into a basic conversation.
I got a friction rash on my dick, causing pain when I had sex or masturbated. I’ve been an idiot about it and have only been letting it heal slightly before caving in and using my dick, one way or the other. I’ve been participating in nofap involuntarily, but damn am I happy!
I’m 19 years old and have been watching porn since I was around 14. At the age of 14, I started becoming aroused to homosexual pictures and this became so stressful to me. I was sure I was gay, and at the same time I knew I wasn’t because I always wanted a wife and kids. This, I found out later, was HOCD caused by these porn images I had seen. After one and a half years of complete distress, guilt, and self hatred I realized I was not gay. But I continued to watch porn. The problem I have is that I don’t seem to actually be addicted to porn but I was addicted to the escalation. I found it a small difficulty to quit porn, but not impossible. I quit only a few weeks ago. But here is my problem. I started with being aroused by gay pictures. That ended and then I was fine. I went on to Anime porn, but then after seeing one with a penis I went on to pictures of shemales. For awhile I thought I only liked shemales and would have to like grow up and marry one. But then that passed and i went onto anal fisting, then urination, and then animals. I thought I was some sort of deviant (this entire time I WAS still attracted to women) but the porn just kept escalating. I was watching that incest porn that was online and reading incest stories and then I stepped over the unthinkable line. I came across, online, a video with…illegal activity in it (I’m sure you can guess) and I wasn’t sure what was happening at first. I saw about 10 seconds of it and then closed my browser. I had a raging hard-on from the dopamine and masturbated even though I was disgusted with what I saw. Since then, my life has been in shambles and I have POCD (it acts JUST like my HOCD). But now I have come to the point where I am questioning my orientation and am on the brink of total depression. I have been having anxiety attacks and it has caused relationship OCD with my long distance girlfriend. The only time I masturbate is when we do it together on the internet and sometimes I can do it just thinking about her but other times I have to go into those fantasies even though I try not to. So basically, my point is…I am not one of those people who actually could NOT stop watching porn, but I definitely had the escalation problem, always trying to find kinkier porn. I have stopped watching porn altogether because I found that when I watched just regular porn, it would get me off at first and then I would start the “hunt” again like I couldn’t control myself… I love my girlfriend so much and it tearing me apart that I am questioning my orientation. Somedays I only think about it maybe a combined total of 10 minutes, other days it will come and my doubts/OCD will be on my mind the entire day.
I used to edge for a whole night while smoking weed. I do not really smoke marijuana anymore, but I do crave the amount of pleasure from the combination of weed and masturbation. I can kinda feel my brain lighting up from just thinking about it, so I just try not to. I was however heading in a pretty bad direction with mood-disorders, feelings of being empty and such a bad case of ED (would have to masturbate with both of my hands while watching porn to get semi-hard, which at 23 is not a good look). I feel that leaving it all behind is a much better choice for my overall well-being. I feel proud.
“Wanting to watch 10 videos all at once, streaming at the same time…” I can totally relate with this. It’s amazing to hear someone else say it. It’s like this sensory overload, or hoarding, or just overstuffing yourself with your favorite junk food… And you feel sick after.
I think a lot of the problem with porn is it tells us not to be okay with what we have available to us sexually. It allows us to foster strange fetishes very quickly that we might not get into if we never stumbled upon it. I may have gotten into shemales if I met a really cute one somewhere and got aroused, but maybe not. I probably wouldn’t have ever given it much thought. I don’t know. But with porn, vanilla sex with a partner (in my case my wife) becomes inadequate almost overnight…
I’m 21 now. Did very well in school, star athlete in highschool, tonnes of confidence.. then it eventually just withered away. Now I’m not going to university anymore (after 2 years then deciding to take a year of to “figure things out”), am unemployed and basically sit around all day doing the same shit. I’ve been caught in a loop. I’m pretty sure I’ve been depressed too. I’ve wasted enough time with this bullshit.
For 3 years, I was unable to cum with my long relationship gf [girlfriend]. She loves me so much that she did not care and our sex life was decent but with that major flaw. 2 weeks ago I decided to start this 3 months challenge. 1st week was a complete nightmare: bad dreams, edging, urges, frustration, anger.. fighting with myself every single night. 2nd week I was able to control it thanks to some tips: exercise, running, keeping myself busy, etc. Today, day 12th I had sex with my gf and I was able to perform perfectly. When I climaxed I cried, finally proof that this is working. I feel stronger than ever and have no desire at all to fap. I know there will be days when the urge arises again but this time I know that not doing is more than worth it.
The old Sunday would go like this. I would wake up, often hung over after a night out where I had no confidence to talk to girls and would go home not only drunk but feeling down about life in general.Shortly after waking I would masturbate. Then I would have massive brain fog, mistake it for exhaustion, and then go back to sleep. That would be late morning. then I would wake again at about 12 noon after an hour or so of really awful pretend sleep that didn’t get rid of the brain fog. Then I might masturbate again, fall asleep again, and then wake up at about 2pm, go downstairs, get some lunch, go back to my room, stick the computer on, masturbate 2 or 3 times to some porn, by this point i wouldn’t even be enjoying it, and I would be having the most terrible brain fog/shutdown/coma/fatigue experience imaginable, and then I would go back to sleep again and get up, finally at about 16:30, go to the gym, and then wonder why my workout was awful and I felt like crap. Then I would bumble through the rest of the day in a slight haze being disorganised, untidy and just think about sex constantly, and then feeling down about it, because I couldn’t have it.
So ok, I’m 21y.o. and still a student. At home most of the time, to study. But PMO is making me depressed, and the withdrawal is making me anxious each time, so I’ve dropped out of my past two exams. I need to be PMO-free, before i can continue with my life. It’s a priority. I know that i’m very prone for addictions, and I’ve beaten my binge-drinking addiction for 3 months now (woohoo!). But ok, PMO keeps me in trouble. Relapsed yesterday after a 9 day no-PMO. Experiencing brain fog now, and dumbness. The first 6 days of my no-PMO period, i experienced severe anxiety, up to the point that i’ve started to cry.
In porn mode, when I saw a woman, subconsciously she was a piece of porn to me. At a subconscious level, my mind was thinking “if only I could find some way to masturbate right in front of her without her seeing me. maybe she could pose for me too.” This led to subconscious hiding behaviors. Hiding in plain sight. It also led to a subconscious fear that she would catch me subconsciously hiding, and subconsciously wishing to masturbate in front of her. This fear made me feel unworthy and shameful, and I would avoid eye contact, conversation, really I would avoid her completely. The need to hide made me blame her for catching me watching. I blamed women for my feelings of fear, shame and low-self-worth; I blamed them for not letting me masturbate all over them, and this kind of led to me having a general dislike of women. The opposite of attraction really, which comes from the Latin meaning drawing or pulling toward. I was in more of a repulsion mode. At the same time as being fearfully repulsed by women, I was snapping mental photographs and pornographizing them in a painful Catch-22.
When I started to fap seriously (16-17 years old despite having begun some years earlier), I starting losing hair and having black circled under my eyes.
I am a widow—happily married for many years from the age of 17. My husband and I had a great life and I lost him to cancer after a brave battle. I never knew porn existed…I know he had playboy ect, but we never discussed it. 2 years later I discovered online porn. My new bf could not believe I had never seen (also never played a video game, did not watch tv…very sheltered) and showed it to me—I am immediately hooked–to the point it made my bf uncomfortable (who enjoys it himself)really hooked—dailey—want to quit—I have learned so much—never heard of dp, facials tho my hubby and i did things other than vanilla—backdoor for instance– I did not know this world existed and now I can’t stop—and it has ramped up my desire 1,000%I am telling you this from the view of a 50 y/od childless (couldn’t) women who was introduced to this at age 50 and now has a real problem. I am fit (size 4) and look 15 years younger (genes) but now I am afraid of what I might be capable of as I have been protected so long….I will try therapy to stop—it is interfering in my life and I have to hide it now that my bf senses I like it too much—so yes, from my perspective it is dangerous, and addicting, I guess I am venting because no one I know would ever believe it if they knew—-poor teenagers—I can’t even imagine being raised with this….
I would have sex with my wife and then still masturbate afterwards. I would wake up in the morning and the first thing I would think of was masturbation. I would model for a shoot and then masturbate to the same shoot but on video. This would leave me miserable, depressed, depleted of any life energy and irritated. My brain didn’t work, I couldn’t think straight, my memory was bad. Constant masturbation affected my erection, my performance in bed, it made me paranoid, affecting my relationships with women and people overall. Read more
I am a 26-year old male, started masturbating since the age of ten, andit ruined my entire adolescent life w/ lots of health problems. When Irealized masturbation is very unhealthy for me, I made several attempts to quit but without any true success. However, I was dating this cute girl for a month, and each time I made out w/ her, there was a lot of precum leaked from my lil boy, and even worse, I realized that my boycould not erect properly. This really freaked me out, especially when the girl asked me to have sex w/ her. That was the first time in my life that a girl asked me for sex, and I never had sex before. I had to find reason to refuse her, which made me feel so upset and mad about myself. I have to do this. I feel like complete shit. I can’t take it any longer. I feel it even before I fap. My body already knows it’s bad, yet I do it anyways. The amount of porn on the internet is like a gold mine for us people who are addicted. It’s terrible. I know it’s terrible, the porn producers know it’s terrible. They prey on the addicted and they prey on the men and women involved in the porn industry. I’ve never been in a relationship and I hope to god, some day I do have one. Pornography has ruined my body, mind and soul. I need to change now. I began using heroin when I was 15, and when I was 19 hit that rockbottom point and went to rehab. After a 4 month stint, I was considered clean and although I’ve occasionally craved, I’ve never gone back. Contrast: I saw my first bit of internet porn when I was 11, began fapping at the same age, and still to this day have the addiction — even though I’m now married to the woman of my dreams! Porn and Fap have put a lot of strain on my marriage… I’ve never actually been able to finish when Wife and I have sex. So here’s the meat of the post. I’ve been trying to NoFap for about 6 months now, and have never made it past Day 6. Something terrifying happened 2 days ago though. I came out of a “blackout” to find myself covered with jizz and porn playing on my computer. I have no memory of seeking out the porn, nor of the fap session and orgasm. This type of thing used to happen right before I hit rock bottom with heroin. I had wanted to stop using, but my brain would effectively shut off and then “wake up” again after I’d used. I’m very scared right now. I hate to make sweeping statements, but I’ve never experienced this sort of thing outside of heroin, and now NoFap. Is it possible that my addiction is on the same level as heroin?!
Porn takes a massive amount of energy outof you – there is no comparison between my energy levels after 25 days[of no porn] and after a day of porn . It’s not just normal energy that’s lost. It’s that ‘go-getter energy’ that has you expanding your life. I now get what various posters means when they talk about “brain fog”. I have been thinking to myself “Wow, is this how it’s been for all of these years?” I just feel out of it, lacking motivation, couldn’t care less.
This is just a warning of what may happen when it comes to excessive fapping/PMO, or what I think my excessive fapping caused.
I’m 33 years old. I’ve been fapping since I was about 11 to squiggly images of tits on the playboy channel. In the mid 90s , that progressed to jerking off to pixelated images of nudes. My habit eventually became 3-4x a day (some days up to 6x), every day of the year….for many many many years. I was pretty depressed in my late teens and I always wondered if my fapping was a result of that. Anyways; life went on and in my mid 20s, While still in my bad fap habit, I developed awful anxiety. This is when I started looking up a connection between excessive fapping and it’s causes because I had zero reason to be anxious but it was uncontrollable to the point where I contemplated suicide a handful of times. I still didn’t stop though. I used fapping to cope with things in my life. I was late to work multiple times because I was busy fapping. I developed weird fetishes I would have never thought turned me on. I’m sure all of this stuff you guys have heard already. However, a few years ago I developed these strange chest pains. It was a tightness and mild shortness of breath. I had test after test from multiple doctors and experts, everything was “fine”. This went on for years (still ongoing) and made my life a hell. It’s not a panic attack by any means. It’s a chest tightening that lingers throughout the day and varies in intensity. One of the many tests I had was a gastric motility test because they had no idea if my stomach was acting up. It is a test that checks how fast your stomach pushes food through. Well, I barelyyyy passed the test which is odd. I looked up reasons why it would be slow and it said gastric motility is effected by the autonomic nervous system….if the sympathetic nervous system is dominating , then gastric motility can be affected. Interesting but I didn’t connect things.
Now years pass and I still feel like crap. Recently , a few weeks ago, I started to notice my heart rate jumps up to about 95-100 when I stand up after lying down. It turns out that is a diagnostic symptom of POTS : postural orthostatic tachycardia. I read what it is and it’s basically when the sympathetic nervous system has a high tone, the parasympathetic nervous system (which is responsible for lowering the heart rate, digestion, etc ) doesn’t work as well because the sympathetic is dominating. There’s also a theory that a deficiency in acetylcholine can cause it..well, of course acetylcholine is one of the things you deplete from your brain when you fap excessively. It’s all is way too much of a coincidence.Was my excessive fapping the cause for this? I can’t be sure but I certainly don’t fit the typical profile of a POTS patient. 80% are females and they usually have it brought upon by a virus or illness. Is this permanent? I really really hope not. However, I decided 2 weeks ago to finally go cold turkey and stop fapping and stop porn. I don’t know if it’s going to help but I figured I’ve been draining my brain and body of so much for so long, so it can’t hurt. I’ve been supplementing with B-vitamins, magnesium and some others to try and jump start some neurotransmitter production naturally.
I’m scared that I’ve done damage to my body by excessive fapping but I’m hoping that with some determination and work, I can reverse it. So a word to the wise: everything in moderation. Anything in excess can and will hurt you in one way or another. a word of warning to fappers
Hi guys i know this sounds stupid but im 12 and myfriendswould always tll me watch P with them i did and i started MB itwas becoming increasngly addictive and non stop MB a day or P at night itried but i just cant and i notice i think because of to much of MB from the P cause me to have a scar (bleed like see thhrought) on my vein and im scared and im trying but i just cant help please.
My most effective failsafe device in terms of preventing relapse was onequestion. Every time I felt like fapping I asked myself, “If you could masturbate right now, but without porn and without any fantasy, would you still do it?” Almost every time the answer came back “No” and that’s how I knew it was my habit still controlling me. I wasn’t interested in the physical sensation of masturbation or orgasm, I was craving the hunt for the perfect scene or perfect girl (arousal addiction). Once I realized it was my habit and not real horniness I would get pissed and my resolve would double.
I was a chronic masturbator for most of my life. Am 27 now, and my body is racked with pain. In the neck and leg mostly. I kicked the porn habit but now my range of motion, that doesn’t trigger symptoms, is limited to walking and lying on my back. Have seen tons of doctors and will see more. http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/2oq2q8/anyone_else_have_chronic_pain_from_masturbating/
A funny-sad look at addiction by someone now rebooting: I never had any experiences with girls until I was 19. I was anorexic, anti-social, and just didn’t have the energy to talk to people or care about myself. During this time I would look at porn and stimulate myself. If I could even remember correctly, my last year of porn, even some of my erections weren’t fully hard when looking at porn. I am just used to constant stimulation I guess. My morning wood is around 70% right now. Last week I got fully erected just looking at my penis through a camera. It’s weird, its like I almost have to see myself in order to get erected… like a film. Theres also a mirror next to my girlfriend’s bed and I look in it and see how we look together and I get somewhat more turned on.
Porn never seemed to affect my work productivity (studying, computer work, etc) or ability to think clearly. Mostly it affected my mood, courage, creative expression, social anxiety, muscle tone, love for life, those types of things.
My retarded ass gave myself genital herpes. Wanna know how I did it? I went out to le club. But before was sure to clear my lips of all outbreak. I got totally fuckfaced at le club and got home. I met no women, because I’m a straight loser so I decided to crank up le computer and look at le online porn. I also thought it’d be a good idea to throw some chewing tobacco in my mouth before hand. Well needless to say I didn’t even think to wash my hands before self-indulgence. The next day I felt a burning sensation on my dick and looked at it later that night. Nothing, next day though I took another look I have five little tiny zits right where I place my index finger on penis when I whack it. Good thing I used my index finger to pull my lip out to throw a dip in. Now I’m just a total facking loser. Balding, with herpes and without a single friend. I am truly an island. I even know who I got herpes from…myself. I just wanna die.
(female) I’m trying to quit, and I’m on Day 2, after multiple relapses. While researching recovery tips on the Internet, I noticed that porn addiction is severely misunderstood and brushed under the refrigerator… Even when I came out to my mom (who’s a psychologist), she had never even heard of porn addiction. She didn’t think it was such a big deal. I watched an average of 3 hours of porn each day, and there are millions like me. I’m currently undergoing serious withdrawal symptoms: depression, a ridiculous amount of anxiety, headaches, incorrigible libido…. I want to know if there are other porn addicts out there. This shit is not human nature. The internet is filled with disgusting shit.
Some of my non-addicted-to-porn friends were wondering why I had these crazy urges to fuck every girl around. It’s like a horny-parasite took over my brain in public and it made me unable to think of anything else than penetrate these women-things. Couldn’t concentrate or act normally anymore.
Since I started MOing in my teens (12-13ish, now 26) I’ve always had a tendency to PMO with my PC muscles constantly contracted and edge to the point where I’d almost O, then I’d stop stimulating myself until I felt the urge dissipate and continue in that fashion until I finished (essentially always the edge). I have difficulty maintaining an erection unless I’m constantly stimulated, while at the same time, tightening my pelvic muscles. As soon as I stop stimulating myself or relax my PC muscles, I begin to lose my erection. For the last few years I’ve noticed that I get seminal leakage as well as having a tendency to PE.
I just realized I have ED and I PE from constant contraction of PC muscles. Any advice?
I am a male 22 years old and last night I was brought to the hospital for nearly seriously damaging my colon. I was so horny and desperate I wanted a release. Got down to it and i felt I needed more stimulation while I was watching porn. Maybe it was time to experiment so I stuck something into my anus a little too far thinking I was feeling great but almost immediately I felt immense pain, pressure, burning almost behind my penis. A trip to the hospital and a cat scan later I’m told I was very lucky to not do any serious damage but I’ll be pretty hurt for a few weeks. I got off lucky with just a moderate to almost serious colitis diagnoses. My point is the feeling of wanting more and more that would satisfy me while looking at porn quite literally pushed me too far to a point where I could have got seriously injured. Don’t let that drive or that hunger for more make you give in. It will damage you! Channel it to something positive and that drive for more will help you on your way to meeting the special someone somewhere that will give you all the satisfaction you couldn’t get from pixels on a screen.
Experimenting because I gave in looking at porn earned me a trip to the hospital.
These 3 symptoms improve every time I stop for a week or more:
- First of all i started feeling a lot of random muscle tremors that were quite uncomfortable and irritating. They started on my forehead just above each of my eyebrow and then progressed to other parts of my body like my hands and thighs. These muscle spasms happen infrequently through the day.
- Having a bowel movement became an issue as i usually felt like my bodies natural waste disposal system had been unbalanced so i usually have to force myself to go to the bathroom without naturally feeling the urge because it’s either that or i start to feel bloated and uncomfortable. Even when i do force myself to go, i hardly pass 1/3 of what i’m meant to on the first try. I felt this was due to the swelling of my prostate due to my daily long sessions of fapping.
- In a resting and relaxed state i started to feel my pulse on different parts of my body. like i could feel my heart beating. This wasn’t normal because i never felt this till recently. it felt like i had high blood pressure or something. But it was always a very uncomfortable feeling when trying to go to sleep and i kept feeling my pulse in odd areas of my body. I googled this and found it affects other people out there. Not sure if it’s also related to their fapping habits.
I have a list of symptoms that I keep. It’s not complete, but I do not experience any kind of difficulty with erections, so the symptoms show nonsexual effects of porn use. I firmly believe ED is significantly less significant than the sum of nonsexual symptoms of PA:
-Reduced Focus;
Upon porn relapse, I have limited ability in most situations to either focus my thoughts or cause the cessation of them, and reduced capacity to give full attention to music or other forms of entertainment. The effects of this include: Inability to complete work, reduced potential for enjoyment of music, reading and games, and a sense of lack of fulfillment and confusion.-Anxiety:
My anxiety often persists for lengths of time without porn use, but significant inclines in level of anxiety are notable in the days after relapse.-Increased fear response:
While my fear response in general is quite mild (with the exception of chronic anxiety), it is greater in the days after porn use and seems to continue to decline for quite some time during reboot.-Reduced intellectual capacity:
I have performed various tasks and tests during reboot and after relapse, and it has become increasingly undeniable that my intellectual abilities are significantly greater when not using porn than after relapse.Absent-mindedness:
I have a severe tendency to misplace things, and believe this is a result of porn addiction. I suspect this would no longer be a problem after mental recovery from porn.Decreased social immersion:
I am more engaged in social situations when porn usage is less.Productivity:
This variable cannot be understated. I am immensely more productive in a multitude of avenues when not using porn or masturbating.
I finally fucking did it. I fapped until my dick bled. After reading online I’ve found I must have ruptured a vessel from fapping too much. Or actually edging all day until it hurt, and then some. Really fucking scary getting blood in my semen. Not happening again. Nothing is worth seeing that again. http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/2ou2z9/blood_in_urine/
But last night, thanks to NoFap, I had intense desire for a friend of mine. She’s a pretty but plain girl. Even so, the emotional component in tandem with pent-up sexual energy made me — for one of the first times in my life — WANT someone in the same room. I wasn’t just horny for horny’s sake, I wanted to know her body and to pleasure her. Porn had taught me attraction to the visual aspect of sex, but now I know what it feels like to yearn for touch and closeness. I desperately want this feeling to persist, so I must not fap. Who’s with me?!
I’m 28 years old. I’ve masturbated at least once per day since I got addicted. I always did it before sleep, not for pleasure, but because it seemed like I had to in order to fall asleep. I’ve hardly had physical contact with a woman, save a few hugs. Needless to say, I’m still a virgin. And the only one I’ve got to blame is myself. I’m not going to go into any detailed background (maybe I will later on), but my addiction began in my early teens and here I am, 15 years later. I’ve also been addicted to MMORPGs for the past 6 years. Some of the problems I’ve noticed:
- Social anxiety – I even hesitate going to the supermarket. It’s difficult being on my own with another person, especially a woman. I avoid running into people when I’m outside.
- Inferiority – I’ve always been telling myself: “Why should you try? You’re not as good as everyone else.”
- Bad memory/brain fog – Especially when it comes to numbers. When I work I have to triple check that I’ve picked the correct item for the customer. I often have a hard time focusing on what others have to say.
- No risk taking – Absolutely none. I’ve always stayed where it’s safe.
- No motivation – I haven’t felt the desire to achieve anything.
I got a friction burn on my junk a few times. I kind of knew I had a problem then.
You just might be a PMO addict if
- You have fapped at work, during business hours.
- You have stolen lotion off a coworkers desk while working late.
- You have ever watched porn in a public place, where you think nobody can see, but worried that the reflection in your glasses would give you away.
- You have fapped at a rest stop on the interstate.
- You have fapped while driving, but kept your eyes open during the orgasm so you wouldnt kill yourself or anybody else.
- You have fapped while camping, and hoped the smell doesn’t attract wildlife
- You have fapped in an airport bathroom, and saw what looked like semen stains on the walls of the stall, and felt relief instead of disgust.
- You have fapped in an airplane bathroom and joined the mile-high fappers club.
- You have fapped in a porta potty.
- You have fapped in a nasty porta potty at a festival, high on something.
- When you try a new drug, you want to see what fapping on that drug is like
- You have fallen asleep fapping, because you were too drunk to be able to climax, but kept going until you passed out.
- You have ever fapped so many times in one day as to shoot blanks.
- You have ever needed to wait for skin to heal that was injured from overzelous fapping.
- You have taken a call while fapping, only to split your attention between the porn and the conversation.
- You have missed deadlines and blown off freelance work because of fapping.
- You have risked serious discipline consequences for your entire platoon by fapping in the stairwell of the fire exit while in Army basic training.
- You have had female roommates move out of your house because they found you fapping in the living room on your computer after you figured everybody was in bed.
- You have had to wash off your privates because of a failed lube experiment.
- 98% of the lotion you have ever owned has gone on your hand and penis.
- You can rank the oils in your kitchen by their lubricating effectiveness.
- You have ever had to slip out of a real sexual encounter to “go to the bathroom” to find some porn to help with an ED episode.
- You have ever lived with a significant other, and you fap considerably more than you have sex.
- You have purchased bootleg xxx dvd’s off of street vendors in third world countries because the bandwidth sucked.
- You have ever done a porn soundcheck by stepping outside to see if anybody can hear it on your lowest speaker setting, because wearing headphones would make it hard to hear somebody walking in on you.
- You have installed porn filters and subsequently circumvented/hacked your way around them.
- You have used browsing proxies to get around somebody elses filters.
- You know exactly how to clear all trace of your browsing history and habits.
- You can’t remember how many times you have deleted your entire collection with the intention of quitting.
- You have ever sifted through your trash can and undeleted porn because you knew you hadn’t hit “empty trash” button yet.
- Whenever you have purchased a newer, bigger monitor and the first thing you want to see on it is how porn looks on it.
- You have downloaded porn to your smartphone for portable fapping on the go.
- You haven’t been able to quit, even though you’ve wanted to for years
“Interesting factoid: I just did some calculations… Assuming an average of an hour and half a day of pornography from age 12 to 27, means I’ve watched roughly A YEAR of porn. Quite possibly significantly more. I’ve been off here and there but had my share of 6+ hour days.”
- Also see Are You Hooked on Porn? Ask ASAM
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