Okay, here’s what you’re going to do. I sympathize with your story, and I know what it’s like to feel swamped and trapped in by PMO addiction, so I’ll give you some advice that helped me get from “I’ll probably cave after two days, and oh christ I started this on a friday fuck me theres no way I’ll ever get anywhere with this” to my current streak.
- Get OpenDNS and K9 Web Protection. Block all sexual categories, all dating categories, and all BLOG categories. Tumblr is a really sneaky one you can’t afford to let loose. Install this in your PC and your laptop and wherever else you use the internet. OpenDNS usually takes 2-3 minutes for setting changes to be applied, which can be a real lifesaver.
- Delete your porn. It’s not an easy decision, it will be painful, and you’re throwing away years of hard work collecting to your specific tastes. But you know you have to do it. It’s already hurt you enough, keeping it there will only do you worse.
- For the first 3-5 days, make sure you are busy and distracted as hell. Try to be home as absolutely little as possible. If you can’t think of anything to schedule immediately for the next few days, go to a library, a barnes and nobles, a park, to read, or to surf the web on a web-filtered laptop. Not being at home, or a place where you usually give into fapping, will be so incredibly helpful for getting past the first few days of withdrawal throes.
- r/NoFap is your life preserver. Posting here whenever you feel down, or pathetic, or despicable, or even when you feel great, proud, and motivated, will help. There are over 26,000 people here going through the exact same struggle, who have been there, who know you can get through it and want to help you get there. Don’t fight this fight alone. In the end, you’ll be the one pushing yourself to success, but this community can help give you that little bit of extra motivation when you’re at your absolute lowest. Accountability partners are also abundantly available if you’re interested.
- I cannot overemphasize the importance of pushups. It sounds stupid, I know. During your time here, if you check the subreddit enough, you’ll find lots of different ways to spend your energy and distract yourself from urges. I encourage you to find as many that work best for you. But pushups are always accessible, and take only thirty seconds or so to do a good 20. They will get your heart pumping, and it’ll divert your body’s attention away from those urges almost instantly. And if they’re still lingering, keep doing sets of pushups, a few seconds break, and more, until your arms feel like they’ll fall off and then you’ll be in the clear.
- COLD SHOWERS. This tip sounds silly too, but there’s a lot of psychological and physiological benefits to it. Start with slightly cold showers and work your way up. But basically there’s about a ~10% testosterone boost after a cold shower, and it really wakes you up and clears your head. Your urges are kept at bay, and you learn the very useful skill of defying what your body wants. Cold showers will be terrifying at first. They will be painful, and you will flinch and convince yourself not to do them. As you stick to it, and overcome your own fears and flinches, you’ll be able to apply that to NoFap even more.
- Ultimately, the most important thing you can ever do with NoFap is to never quit. I don’t care if you reset every other day for a whole month or two. Even if that’s the best you can do, you’re now PMOing half as often as you did. The most inspiring story I’ve ever seen here was of a guy who had a 15 month streak…after 3 whole years of sticking to NoFap. As long as you keep coming back, because you know you have to and because you know how important it is for your own good, you cannot fail. It is only a matter of time until you reset your neural pathways and break free from your addiction.
Days 1-5: Distract yourself, which I happened to do the weekend I started, and it will be so much easier.
Days 5-15: This is by far the hardest period, and where most people will trip up. After the first two weeks, you are out of the “breakthrough period” and in the clear. Your body will be used to the habit of NoFap to a sufficient degree for it to not suffer as severe withdrawal symptoms. Keep us updated here, and follow those tips, and never let yourself down. You owe yourself too much respect to quit, and even if you fall, just get right back up and you’ll make it.
Past day 15: You’ll find yourself with this absurdly godlike sense of testosterone and confidence (that may be placebo, but still happens very commonly) that will force you to take up new and better habits. Look into sports, or social gatherings, or new ventures, or new skills, or an instrument, or whatever floats your boat. Many fapstronauts take up meditation, and it does make things much, much easier. All the time and insane energy you had spent on PMO will now still be there, but not being used, and it’s yours for the taking.
Message me if you ever need to talk, or if you have any questions. All of /r/nofap is here for you too, and never forget that. I hope to see you breaking out of your addiction and making it to a full reset. Best of luck, hemadethriller.
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