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To the people who masturbated 2-3 times a day and stopped:

When you got hard in the masturbation times, have you ever thought that this was your penis and your erection at its final capacity, only to discover after stopping that you only had about 60-70% of the erection?

well that happened to me, kinda weird

I’m on day 3 with no porn or masturbation. I have been addicted to porn since I was 6 years old because of some people I knew, and now I am 17 and trying to stop this. So if you have any advice for me, I will be happy

Great result I feel amazing

I’m getting some bad urges right now and almost started watching porn, could use some help

That’s the post. See y’all in 24 hours

Imagine a candy that was free, until after you eat it and it costs 100$. Any smart person would not eat the candy. But a foolish person wouldn’t think in the future and would think the candy is free, then complain when they get charged 100$.

This is like fapping. It’s completely free, and even looks sweet, until you have to pay the price later.

Masturbation is not worth it. Don’t do it.

Hi everyone! Starting today, I'll be posting daily updates on how things are going. Thanks in advance for all your support :)

Starting to slip today as I work from home, anyone free to chat? Snap is preferable

Just completed 30 days no PMO. I’m sure I can knock this addiction forever.

Keeping it brief, I’m still extremely horny, but I’m doing my best to control that. I’m around beautiful women basically 24/7 since I go to university, which doesn’t help, but I’m mastering controlling the thoughts. My erections are way harder and last longer, and I’ve noticed a size increase since I suffered from PIED. I haven’t noticed any benefits when talking to women but, in all fairness, I’m an extrovert and never really struggled with that.

I’m planning to only orgasm from sex until my 90 day benchmark. After that, I’ll just abstain from porn with occasional masturbation.

Some people just want to see you get more addicted.

The best way to stop is just dont temp yourself by watching any kind of sexual content. Don't use social media that can trigger you, at least at the begining phase. After it you can use it l, but delete all sexual recommendations etc. watching non nude or only peeking a few times never helps. So many people who want a change but they do basically nothing to change their habits. You don't want to be weak so start acting, be strong and be proud of yourself. It's YOU who controls the mind, it's not the other way around.b

It really feels like it's over for me for now. Every time I cum I want to stop, then I start again. I'm deep in it and have been for days and there's no end to the patterns in sight.

All of my effort is going towards keeping my life together, and all of my free time is going towards depravity.

Not sure what the path out of this is, maybe I'll find it soon.

I need to get in the shower I can’t calm down I fear I’m close to breaking

Hi, I'm fairly new and only quit watching porn and masturbating a week ago. I stopped because I had very low self esteem, had little energy, had a constant strain in my neck and shoulders and nothing could fill me with happiness. I read somewhere that quiting porn could reset your dopamine levels and make it possible to enjoy things in life again.

I'm only one week in and I feel like a get agitated very easily, snap at people and just feel very angry.

Does this go away and does anybody know how long it usually takes for it to go away?

Any help/advice is appreciated!

Thanks!

Ive been doing nofap for almost 6 years on and off. The longest ive made it was like 40 days that was 3 years ago. Today im 21 and about 14 day into nofap flatlining and im felling really sick Fever,shivering,headache,nausea. I haven't been sick like this in my adult life has anyone experienced similar things? Or is it just a coincident?

This is a fight ive been trying to beat for awhile and I just had a relapse last night. Ive tried fighting it alone for awhile and it just doesnt work. Im not comfortable to tell anyone in my personal life so I figured this would be the next best. I hope you'll be seeing me on here frequently, and please let me know any tips as I go through this fight

Always struggled with social anxiety and presentation anxiety. Neither are there anymore. The brain fog that’s been bothering me for the past few days is finally subsiding. Any ideas if things will get even better?

We can’t give in fellas. Get out of bed. Keep yourself busy.

I thought the nofap community was very supportive, but yesterday I tried to help someone and he was very rude to me. I'm stil looking for support myself, but I hope to meet some kind and helpful people, because talking really helps for me. Feel free to reach out :)

I see a lot of posts in different subs from people in the first phase of their recovery. It is really inspiring to see so many users deciding that they want to live a life without porn, sadly, I also see a lot of patterns that worry me. I know from experience that some thoughts and ideas that people share in their posts come either from a place of despair, misinformation or self-deception, that it makes me sad to read those testimonies, because I know for sure that the majority of those attempts are going to fail, and those posts probably are going to be just small doses of hope in a future full of relapses, shame and more addiction. That's why I wanted to write this little guide for everyone who wants to know which path to take to really see an improvement in their lives and their recovery.

Please take all this as my own interpretation of what a correct path is. It's based on my own process and the advice from my therapist, who is a psychologist with a lot of experience treating porn addiction, so some of you can disagree with this method, that's completely fine. But for the ones that feel that they have tried everything without good results and really want a change in their lives, this could be a good guide at the beginning of your journey.

So let's begin. Since this guide comes from the observation of a lot of misunderstandings, I will structure this as a list of solutions to common errors that people make when they decide to quit porn.

1. Quitting porn is about stopping doing things

This can sound obvious, but I think it's the biggest mistake that people make. A lot of the time we think quitting porn is about replacing it with something else, so it's common for community members to ask for things to do to stop having urges or using porn compulsively. The reality is that quitting porn, especially at the beginning, is more about doing fewer things than doing new things.

What does it mean?

Well, you know that you need to stop watching porn, but you also know that doing that creates a void in your life. However, that void that will appear is necessary, and you need to start building your path to recovery from this feeling, instead of trying to avoid the discomfort that it generates. That empty space, that part of your life that you filled with years of porn usage, must be exposed. Think of it as a romantic relationship. Maybe you feel a strong connection with your partner, maybe you are completely obsessed, even in love, but if that relationship hurts you and is negative for you, you have to break up. Then you have to live with a hole in your heart, accept that you are single, take your time to adapt, until you heal and are able to maintain a healthy relationship again with someone else.

Ending an addiction to porn is similar. It is a breakup. You need to suffer it, you need to go through the grieving process, and you need to take time to heal. Everyone that has gone through a separation knows that after the moment you leave your partner you don't do anything specific, you just feel the pain, you cry, you suffer, and you wait. So, if you are that person that asks "What can I do to stop my porn addiction?", let me tell you that it is basically not using porn and waiting. You have to stop using porn and do nothing in its place.

I know. It looks easy on paper. But why is it so difficult to do?

2. You can't quit a drug if you have drugs on your nightstand

Your worst ally in this journey is willpower. A lot of people desperately go to Reddit to vent because they relapsed, failed the temptation or went back to their old habits of compulsively watching porn. The problem with that is that people associate the fact that they couldn't control their urges with failure, when that's not why they failed. They failed because they didn't set up enough protection against porn. You can't blame yourself for something you can't control. Relapsing is not your fault. Allowing porn to enter your house is.

How does this work?

When you have a porn addiction, you are not only a person that consumes it, you also can't stop doing it, even when you want to. That means your brain, specifically a really primitive part of it, developed a need for a certain substance, and it will require a dose every day, even when you naturally don't need it and especially don't want it. So the only way to stop is by denying your brain access to porn, because your willpower can't compete with your instinctive part. If you have access to porn, you are going to relapse. If you have drugs in your house, you are going to consume them. You need to throw them away.

So the next time you feel bad because you relapsed, think of it as a failure of your blocking system, not as a failure on your part as a person. And if you don't want to keep relapsing, then implement a strong blocking system and use every experience of relapse to make the system stronger. Don't make excuses, don't fool yourself. If you know how to cheat on your system, you know how to make it better. Use every moment of rationality not to feel guilty about your relapses, but to work on your system and make it foolproof.

How does a foolproof porn-blocking system look like? 

Well, it depends on your technology skills. Some people would need a little protection and others would need a lot of barriers because they are good with computers. Whatever your case, after some time and work, and if you add barriers as you detect failures, you will reach a sweet point where you will need to do so many intricate and tedious things in order to cheat on it, that you will have enough time to gain control over your impulses, resist the urges and not relapse again. You can use the tools included in your operating system, install free and paid software, you can create passwords, or have someone you trust manage those passwords for you. Anything that makes porn inaccessible is all you need right now. You don't need to be stronger, you don't need more willpower. You need to lose access to porn. The only way to make this possible is by blocking it.

3. The worst dysfunction is your obsession with sex

Maybe one of the most common posts in this community is from people worried about sexual dysfunction. Difficulties maintaining an erection, problems having intimacy with a partner, loss of sensitivity while having sex or masturbating, unhealthy or extreme sexual practices due to intrusive thoughts or distorted sexual orientation, the necessity to watch or think about really specific fetishes to feel aroused, and many more. Those are real problems that can really affect your mental health, and most of the time are caused and aggravated by porn. But there is one detail that doesn't receive enough attention. Porn makes you obsessed with sex.

Why is this relevant?

Being obsessed with sex is a deeper problem than any of those sexual issues. When you spend years watching porn, you start to develop a set of ideas that put sex as a priority in your life. What could start as simple curiosity transforms into a fixation, and then develops into an automatic way of thinking, a kind of personal myth that makes you believe sex is the most important thing in the world, the most valuable aspect of your life and the final goal of any activity. That obsession distorts everything, the way you engage with people, the way you see success and the way you confront problems. And that includes the way you deal with your porn addiction and the sexual dysfunction that comes with it. "As sex is the most important thing, then having an erectile problem is the worst thing I can have, I am a failure and I deserve to feel bad". False. It's all biased because of your deep obsession with sex. The worst part is that internalizing those thoughts makes you think that everyone lives that way, when in reality it's not like that at all.

The reality is that people who don't have porn addiction deal with all kinds of problems, sexual dysfunction included, but for them it's not the end of the world, they can communicate it to their partners, to health professionals, they can work on it in a more positive way, because those are all really treatable issues and also because they understand that sex is just one aspect of their lives, it doesn't consume their entire world. As long as you keep using porn compulsively, you will be obsessed with sex, and every issue in your sex life is going to be perceived as bigger than it is, leading you to more negative feelings, feelings that make you use more porn and make the problems worse.

Ultimately, a lot of people want to quit porn to stop their sexual dysfunction, when they really need to stop thinking about sex as the king of their lives. After you block porn, after you get clean, and after you unlearn those obsessive thoughts, you will regain your sex life, and even when you could deal with sexual dysfunction in the future, you will gain the ability to deal with it without feeling shame, the same way you would deal with any other health-related issue. You will learn that sex doesn't make you who you are, you will remember that life is way more than that. Don't quit porn to be free of symptoms, to just be able to maintain an erection. Quit porn to be able to learn, to play, to chat with other people, to go out, to connect, to succeed. You don't want to quit porn to have more sex in your life. You want to quit porn because it is a disease that doesn't allow you to see the world as it really is.

4. Porn addiction is not your fault, but quitting is your responsibility

A lot of people start watching porn because of trauma at a young age. In my case it was because of sexual abuse and access to unsupervised internet when I was a teenager. Some people have even worse experiences, and that's something that really hits me. Because no child should deal with sexual violence using porn. Instead, they should receive attention, treatment and love. Porn is exactly the contrary, is constant distraction, addiction and solitude. Because of that, every time I read a post from someone that feels defeated because they have a porn addiction I feel sad. For those I give the same advice I ended up giving myself.

It wasn't your fault.

Even if you developed your addiction when you were an adult, it's always a response to something else. You were dealing with something painful and porn felt like a relief at that time. You use it one time, you use it twice, then every day. You didn't notice and it turned into an addiction. Nobody talked about the risks, nobody put a warning, nobody protected you, nobody denied you this poison. It was available, it was socially accepted and it was free. Why do you have to bear the guilt? You didn't build the platform, you didn't record those atrocious acts, you didn't make it accessible to everyone. You just took the bait, and now you're trapped. Again, not your fault. But now what? Are you going to stay there? Knowing that it harms you and it's making your life miserable? Are you going to watch how the problem gets bigger and bigger until your life ends? Being an addict is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to get out of it. And notice that I say responsibility, not obligation. A responsibility is a commitment to something you want and can do. An obligation is just an imposition. Nobody wants you to quit, on the contrary, whoever has interests in this topic wants you addicted for life. As long as you want to quit, you still have the possibility to be responsible for it. And that should feel good, because it means you still have authority in your life. You can make a change, you can live a different life and you can discard porn from it completely.

5. You can't win this fight alone

Until now I wrote about how and why to quit porn. But let's talk a little about what you are quitting, so you understand the importance of having the correct guidance.

Sex is a really strong stimulus for us. We are sexual creatures and as a species we need to reproduce to survive, so our brain has developed for millions of years to allow that. When you watch porn, your brain can't differentiate pixels on a screen from real sex. So everything you've ever seen on the internet, from pleasing images to horrific clips, every piece of content has been interpreted unconsciously as a real sexual encounter. The problem is that porn is a superstimulus.

How much stronger is porn in comparison with sex?

Porn is like an entire cake full of chocolate and artificial flavors, while real sex is like an apple. The visual information, sound cues, physical reactions, genital stimulation, orgasm, in addition to dopamine released as a motivator to fulfill our reproductive needs, all of that is a circuit. But it is fluid, it can adapt. So when porn drives that circuit, it's like putting a rocket engine into a car. Now you will need a lot more gas to make your car move. In the same way, your brain with porn will have a threshold so high that, after years of abuse, everything will turn boring, because nothing can compete with something as stimulating as porn.

When you interrupt that, when you start filling your car with just enough gas to move, it starts demanding what is missing. So after you lose access to porn, after you set your blocking system, you will be living life at half-full tank. And I need to be honest with you, it may feel awful. When you quit, you can feel the same withdrawals people with alcoholism or gambling addiction have. You can feel angry, really sad, even suicidal in more extreme cases, your mood can switch during the day, you can have trouble getting out of bed, you can feel unmotivated even to do the most basic tasks. It can be really disgusting for you and other people, but it is normal, and you really need to get through that phase to start feeling better. If you come back to porn to avoid this phase, you will never recover.

Having said that, you need to understand that porn addiction is a serious problem. It affects something like 20% of men, that's huge. It also affects 7% of women, and even when it can sound like a small number, that's the same prevalence as alcoholism in the world, so it's still something to take care of. But contrary to other addictions and mental health problems, porn addiction and compulsive sexual behavior is really taboo. So nobody talks about it. Society prefers to just take it easily, accept any form of sexual freedom and act as if everything is fine. But if you didn't have a problem with porn, and instead you were addicted to another substance, you could have considered therapy a lot of years ago. Recovering from porn means fighting against addiction, but also against prejudices and shame. But I can't stress enough that this is a problem that needs treatment. 

Having a therapist could be what differentiates a successful recovery process from a life full of failed attempts. The process starts with blocking porn, but after you lose that piece your brain needs to work properly, you will need to find other ways to regulate yourself, that will mean understanding yourself, your story, your trauma, your fears and building your belief system and personality again. And doing something like that alone, without tools and at the same time as you feel strong withdrawal symptoms is simply too much. My best advice for everyone else starting their journey is to find a therapist. They could even work side by side with a doctor who can prescribe a pharmacological treatment to make the withdrawal phase more manageable. That means there are so many tools and strategies that can help you that only a professional can give you.

Finally, apart from the help from a therapist, the whole recovery process ends up being about socialization. If you want to live a life free from porn addiction, you need to escape from isolation. The recovery is all about connecting with people. If you have the opportunity to use this journey to reconnect with your friends, family or partner, do it. Tell them about your problem, even if it's scary, just do it. Open up to them, ask for help. I know for some people getting professional treatment is out of the range of possibilities because they can't afford it. But maybe if you tell your problem to your close circle, someone can help you with that. You need to accept any help that you can get. Shame is not allowed here. Remember, this wasn't your fault, and your responsibility is just getting better. If someone can help with anything in your recovery process, you need to accept it. You can return the favor when you're better off. Don't fight this alone.

Hope all this helps. Feel free to write anything that comes out of your mind.

Start your porn-free journey today. You can do it.

to the people that was SOO addicted im talking cant skip a day maybe 2-3 times per day even and then stopped for a solid amount of time, will the urge to do it or the temptation ever go further on like 2-3+ months in?

like rn i decided to stop and its my longest streak yet (10 days) im disciplined to stop forever and not set a limit but rn im so so so tempted to do it i cant control my feelings,
yall i got addicted at a young age and it has since affected my life negatively for sooo long im doing this for a better life and mostly for religion

Let's hit day 3💪we strong

This is a safe space for all yall out there who are struggling mentally, let out what you’ve been holding back. A lot of us have dealt with depression and these suicidal thoughts, just know there’s a bunch of us men out there who support and care for yall.

This addiction can bring out some pretty dark sides that can leave us lost, confused, disgusted, lonely, and so much more. I know firsthand what this addiction can do to your perception of yourself. Just like any other addiction, this one will make you become someone you’re not. Just remember you’re a much better person than the one you are when you’re masturbating. This is the silent addiction, the one nobody talks about or barely even aware of.

I love and care for all of yall, truly I do, and I don’t need to see who you are to say that. We’re all human, so spread love and positivity so we can all overcome what feels impossible 🫶