A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays; Nofap and Life
This is a selection of my thoughts after having tried nofap for 3 months. Not a story as such, just some general points you may find interesting. The focus is on how nofap alters all areas of life.
To start off with, here are my vital statistics.
- Sex: Male
- Age: 26
- Addicted since: 1998
- Intensity of Addiction: 2 PMO or MO per day average
- Attempt 1: 5 days
- Attempt 2: 7 days
- Attempt 3: 7 days
- Attempt 4: 11 days
- Attempt 5: 35 days
- Attempt 6: 14 days
- Reason for my latest relapse: Drug hangover
- Prolactin & the post-fap feeling
The difference in mood, character and outlook after fapping is so obvious to me now. After yesterday’s relapse, I lazed in bed not wanting to move for the first time in 2 weeks. My thoughts turned to suicide, which never happens on a nofap streak. There was a gnawing, empty feeling in the stomach. I knew I desperately needed food, and that my body was eating my hard-gained muscles every minute I lay there like a corpse, but I still didn’t move for hours. I hoped to return to sweet unconsciousness where nothing could trouble me. It’s beautiful out & sunny for the first time in weeks. All I want to do is sit here in my chair. I feel like I don’t belong outside. I feel fat & disgusting even though I know really I have a great physique. I want avoid food, but when I put my jeans on they were looser than usual. I don’t want to speak to anyone. It’s madness.
- Wisdom & Understanding
I have learned so much. The theory of superstimuli and mismatched instincts has given me the power of hope. I know what to do to be the best I can be, I just have to see it through. This is amazing and keeps me going in those dark moments. I have the confidence of knowing what life is about at the core – balancing and optimizing the reward system for maximum long term potential success.
- Desperate for Easy Arousal
Since starting, my brain has attempted to cheat at every turn. In the early attempts, it was straight up edging to softcore bikini pics and youtube vids – the ‘it’s not nudity so it’s ok’ phase.
Then, I abandoned visual stimuli altogether, and somehow discovered audio erotic hypnosis mp3s. I thought ‘it’s not visual, how can it be porn?’ – well, it is porn – nasty porn.
Lately, I made all visual and audio forms of artificial arousal reset conditions. At around the same time, I ‘mysteriously’ started to get into what I call ‘clean’ J pop (japanese pop music). This is mainly cutesy but (critically) non-sexulaized music sung by female japanese girl groups. I actually liked the music on its own, strangely. It never caused me to relapse or felt like porn, but it seemed to fill a gap – there is definitely something unwholesome about it – like a ‘femininity fix’ which comes from the computer screen / headphones rather then the outside world. It’s just as bad.
And finally, nofap itself. I am addicted to the feeling of sharing and closeness it allows. This should come from the outside world, not the computer. I spend way too much time on here. Perhaps I will scale down my use next time.
- Alcohol & Other Recreational Drugs
I won’t beat around the bush – in the past year I have been a big recreational drug user, which I now realize was a result of my feeling terrible from my constant fap hangovers. I made a point of doing everything under the sun (yes, everything) – I am very lucky not to have become properly addicted to a substance.
Hangovers from alcohol and other drugs have caused my last 5 porn relapses. They just dilute and immobilize the willpower in a horribly predictable fashion.
So, thanks to nofap, alcohol and other drugs are now leaving my life for good. Compared to giving up PMO, frankly, kicking out the drugs will be a cakewalk.
Cigarettes, too, are coming close to getting the boot, although there is still a little way to go for that. It seems the longer I do nofap, the worse I feel after smoking. So now I can say I am considering quitting – before, I would have happily told you I loved to smoke and had no plans to quit.
- The Gym & Physical Standards
In the earlier attempts, the gym was critical to me. I have used gyms on and off for many years, but combined with nofap, this is the first time I have ever succeeded in getting a very good physique. I always wondered why I never got results from earlier gym eras. Now I know – I was too drained from fapping to properly care about pushing that iron for real.
But there is a dark side. Since getting a good physique, I have become attached to it in an unhealthy way. I feel that even minor imperfections / fat buildups are just unacceptable and take me down to zero in the eyes of others, when in reality nobody can even tell. It’s becoming an obsession – dare I say an addiction. I expect to be seen as more attractive as a result of my improved physique, but this isn’t the way a lot of girls think, and I have found that out to my chagrin.
The source of this unhealthy attitude to my body? Male porn stars. Usually they are almost impossibly muscular. Years and years of seeing them fucking the hottest women left a mark in my mind that will take more than just knowledge and understanding to undo.
Don’t think I am talking down the gym, though. It is an amazing nofap and general mood assist, and encourages healthy eating.
- Nofap ‘Burnout’
My longest streak was 35 days. I felt godlike. I expected to win at everything. However, this is not the way it went. I was treating nofap as just a thing to do to become more attractive. I thought ‘now I’ve done this, the rest will just sort itself out on its own’. It did not. I crashed, burned and relapsed hard.
The problem was not nofap, but my expectations and attitude. Sure, i’d temporarily fixed my fapping problem and had made myself attracted to real women again, but had failed to address the other character issues that won’t be eliminated just by simple abstinence from masturbation and porn.
- The Eyes Have It
Usually after 5 or 6 days, I start eyeing random women on the street. In fact, I have gone out on the street for no reason apart from to look for women to make eyes at.
Now, this does work. I don’t know if it’s just me noticing or something else, but when I look hungrily at women, they tend to look back or at least do something. The changes that come about in your hormone balance and posture and movement definitely make you more attractive to women if you have a decent physical base, but this ‘first impression’ is immediately undone if you don’t have the rest of your game sorted. I found that out the hard way.
Nofap is an assist to attractiveness, but you still have to do the hard work yourself.
- Regressing Through Past Personalities
When you remove the crutch, you start to feel old pains. Wounds that never healed become visible again.
I think I originally had quite an intense personality. I would get excited or depressed very easily. This made me seem odd or bothersome to those around me, I think, and I always had a lot of trouble finding friends.
Memories come back to me now of pains long forgotten. For example, I completely forgot about how I lost all my friends in the first year of high school. I was in a group, then the next thing I knew, I was rejected from the group. Was it my fault? Probably, partially, I don’t know. All I do know is that I didn’t pick myself up and join a new group. I fapped instead.
There’s also the good bits – the feelings of genuine attraction and desire for innocent intimacy with women without the disgusting overlay of images from porn. They are rare but getting more common.
It feels like I am being given another chance to grow again. It will be hard, but it will be better this time.
- Lead, Monitors & The Fall of Western Civilization
How many young men today are addicted to the internet & porn? It might be more than we guess, it might be less.
All I know is that when I was fapping, I was a very ineffective member of society. I did not give 2 hoots about the following:
- Work
- Family
- Debt
- Womens’ feelings
- The prospect of child-rearing (it just seemed ridiculous to me – why would anyone have kids?)
- The dangers of addictive drugs
- Voting & politics
- My local community
- Patriotism
I mean, I would be able to write long reddit posts on why something was right or wrong, and philosophize endlessly. But when it came to action, I was a dead agent.
If any reasonable proportion of guys are anything like I was, then we as a civilization are in pretty big trouble.
There is a historical myth that the Roman Empire fell due to the subtle effects of lead poisoning – a side effect of their impressive new lead plumbing technology.
Whether this is true or not is not relevant to the point. What is relevant is the analogy to today’s computer monitors, which have plumbed their way into every home and every bedroom, pumping the internet into the brains of those who bear witness.
Nofap is the best thing about the internet as far as I am concerned – but even nofap, an anonymous support network, is still giving me an excuse not to link and heal with real people face to face. Also, if it were not for the internet, I would not need nofap.
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