Novice of my domain.

So this was my first week of NOFAP, and it felt crap.

1st day wasn't so bad, but 2nd day was hell. I could barely eat, I couldn't finish my workout, felt exhausted.

3rd day I was in bed for most of it.

4th day was ok but every time I ate my stomach felt like I had been punched in the gut.

5th day I worked out and missed my last rep on deadlift, I felt a lot weaker.

Yesterday I was sore from my workout, which I hadn't experienced for 2 weeks and I felt exhausted and starving.

Today my anxiety is up and I feel depressed my brain feels foggy. I have been finding it hard to sleep and hard to get out of bed. I have very little motivation for work or anything.

I have tried quitting before and I have never felt this bad. Is this normal? 

Hi hopeful2,

Welcome here, good you've taken this step. By NOFAP you mean no porn and masturbation? The effects will of course change from person to person. Factors such as how long have you been addicted, how frequent did you use, how far 'gone' were you etc. No need to answer these questions if you don't want but of course your personal situation affects how your withdrawal from porn will go. Check around in some of the other journals to see how people are dealing in their struggles and I'm sure you'll find some inspiration and good tips!

A week is great, has this been a long time without porn for you? I trust you'll be able to continue this, work towards the future and don't be afraid of the past

Hi Sanders,

Thanks for the reply.

Yep, no masturbation and no porn.

A few years ago I went 40 days, but I didn't have anyone to make me accountable so I think I slipped because of that. Now I have a friend who is making me accountable, which is helping.

This is the longest I have been on purpose. Sometimes I have stopped for few days because my porn use escalated and I was watching some pretty aggressive stuff, and I was watching at least 3 times a day, and it caused some physical pain which I dont want to go into but it made me stop for a few days. But I always became depressed and went back to it. Now I know if I am feeling down I can speak to my friend or post on here, or even just read through other people's posts.

Judging from others I thought I was pretty tame compared to them, but looks like I was wrong. Thanks again for the reply.

Sad to read this, but I will support you. We are in the same span. I have just started too, though this is my first time. I will observe your progress.

Best wishes.

Hey kierv, thanks. I wish you luck. Honestly it is difficult but nothing great comes easy, PMO is easy and isn't worth jack.

Well 8th day for me, feel pretty depressed and unmotivated, think I need to try and wake up earlier might help. One thing keeping me going is I have an image of what I want to be, I want to be a loving husband one day and a caring father.y friend tolde about her ex and how his porn use wrecked her marriage and her. The one defence I always had was who am I hurting except myself? (Says a lot about how I look at myself). But I think I see the truth now, it's not going to just hurt me.

Another thought is I am wondering if I'm depressed because I'm not watching porn or was porn covering my depression.

I don't know yet, I suppose we will see.

hopeful2 said:

Another thought is I am wondering if I'm depressed because I'm not watching porn or was porn covering my depression.

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This is something I want to know too. I mean, I go to therapy and I confront some issues from my past, but porn withdrawal would be helpful to assess:
1)  if porn was an extra booster to my problems
2)  if therapy works when above extra booster is removed

If you have some suspicion that porn was just a painkiller, I recommend going to some therapist. I never mentioned my porn problem during therapy and I regret it, because I hadn't realized how influential it could be (as a potential painkiller which worsen the situation or the other foundation of my condition). On the other hand my therapist is not sexologist, so I didn't know if it makes any sense...

Anyway, good luck.

Hey Kierv,

I went to a therapist once, with a goal to quit porn. He suggested that I relied on porn as comfort, or as you put it a pain killer. I tried to confront those issues which were at the cause, but it didn't help, I kinda lost faith in the process.

But I think the first thing to do for me is quit PMO first. Then asses where I am because I think I agree with assessment no. 2 that therapy works when that booster is gone.

I am starting to feel a little better, definately not as bad as the past few days.

Let me know how it goes on your end.

Ok first I feel good. Really good. 9 days no PMO and I have been pretty good and saying no. Gonna keep wary though, don't trust myself one bit.

However the migraine is kinda nuts, emotionally I feel happy, I'm cracking jokes and I even played a game without feeling bored last night. Haven't done that in a few years.

I'm convinced the migraine is part of the detox, haven't had one like this in years. Painkiller didn't really help. Possible I've been using PMO as a painkiller. But you know what none of it matters. I actually can say I feel happy. I have a warm feeling in my stomach and I'm actually feeling positive.

I'm gonna take it as a victory but stay focused. Not out of the woods. It's import to recognise your victories when you get them and remind yourself of the dangers. At any point the desire could flood into me and it will be a real bitch.

Another thing I realised is that I need to embrace the pain. I believe Bill Burr said a joke, a hangover is your bodies way of telling you what a miserable piece of s*** you are after drinking. Same here, the migraine, the low energy is telling me that I was an idiot for not realising how much damage I was doing.

Here's to another day and more.

It's import to recognise your victories when you get them and remind yourself of the dangers

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I will write about it more in the future. I have my own suspicions, but I need to time to "test" it.

Good to see you experienced a fast change of your mood.

Looking forward to hear what you have to say kierv. It's definitely a process.

So today I felt positive, less euphoric than prior day but still good.

Treated myself to several my brothers cocktails as a reward.

Was taking a nap to sleep it off and when I woke up began fantasising about stuff. Got me pretty jacked up but after an hour I calmed myself down. Did not "take care of myself". So hopefully got some reinforcement from that.

Another hour and I will have reached 10 days. Another mile stone. Gonna keep it going.

Ok, so far no porn for 11 days. Which is good.

MOd twice so far. Which I know is not perfect. I didn't fantasise which is why I do not consider it a relapse. I also am not sleeping well which I think is workout related and is adding to my stress, which makes things more difficult.

I feel very tired, I slept properly for four hours and woke up touching myself. Basically spent the whole night going in and out and still waking up with a boner. It did feel nice, and I didn't have that disgust I usually feel after PMO. But that being said it's more than just quitting porn, I need to establish healthy habits and MOing when I feel stressed is not a healthy habit. No excuses. Need to find some way to sleep tonight.

I'm going to track MO separately. If I fantasise that will restart my Porn counter and if I just MO I will restart a different counter. I know it's a coping mechanism. But at the moment I think I need it.

Well, the whole NOFAP/NOPMO challange is a matter of your subjective attitude. You can set your own rules within more general foundation.
I think it's good you can form your own way. The only MUST is to avoid porn. If you pass out your 90-days exam with some additional MO you are still the hero.

This week I have my own fantasies or rather "unexpected thoughts", but I will write more about it my journal. I think how damaging or perhaps healthy they are if you can separate them from porn or put your erotic dreams in non-porn context. That's very interesting question for me.

Of course, try your max. If you can go on hard mode, do it. But if you're doing MO and still fantasize, don't blame yourself. The most important thing is to avoid porn.

kierv said:

Well, the whole NOFAP/NOPMO challange is a matter of your subjective attitude. You can set your own rules within more general foundation.
I think it's good you can form your own way. The only MUST is to avoid porn. If you pass out your 90-days exam with some additional MO you are still the hero.

This week I have my own fantasies or rather "unexpected thoughts", but I will write more about it my journal. I think how damaging or perhaps healthy they are if you can separate them from porn or put your erotic dreams in non-porn context. That's very interesting question for me.

Of course, try your max. If you can go on hard mode, do it. But if you're doing MO and still fantasize, don't blame yourself. The most important thing is to avoid porn.

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Thanks Kierv, I needed that. I have been beating myself up about it thinking maybe I am making an excuse for myself. But you are right, Porn is the main issue. MO is I suppose a bad habit which can become worse.

I'm going to quit both and the idea of Hard Mode is great ideally, but pragmatically I think we all need to see the small victories. Otherwise we can just become depressed and go insane.

"POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING"







One thing I noticed, I have become a lot more sensitive. I didn't need a tight grip when I MOd (just two fingers and lube), and honestly it wasn't that I didn't want to fantasise, I didn't need to. Is this normal?

You're welcome.

To me it's obvious that porn is always the biggest vermin here. Masturbation is natural and I believe that instead of trying to get rid of masturbation completely we all should learn how to diffuse our sexual tensions in a healthy/safe way. It's important not to overuse masturbation or use it just when you experience other emotions than sexual arousal (i.e. when you're sad or simply bored). I don't encourage anyone to introduce masturbation if they follow hard mode way, but I put an equal sign between you and me. Our foremost need is to eradicate porn. Other activities are more discretionary. I try not to masturbate during my reboot, because I wanted to check my body's reaction. I will do my best, but nothing can be promised for good.

I'm going to quit both and the idea of Hard Mode is great ideally, but pragmatically I think we all need to see the small victories. Otherwise we can just become depressed and go insane.

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Exactly. Perhaps this is why some people are still depressed and in tatters even after 6-12 months of successful hard mode? They avoid masturbation to no avail and they're not aware of the fact that lack of healthy masturbation can be a trigger of bad mood? I think all men know that painful feeling when energy amasses in the area of underbelly but you cannot release it. Sometimes it's unbearable and it doesn't happen only in respect of porn. In the second scenario these unhappy people decided to go back to masturbation during their long reboot and now they're convinced that this action caused they cannot feel better in their endless fight. And what I see? I see that in their journals they share specific pieces of information which suggest they need to fight on many other battlefronts. Porn is just one of them, so they need more than giving up porn. They often need a help from therapist, their family, friends etc. Sometimes they cannot get it from varied reasons. They frustration rises and they still blame masturbation...

Of course, I gave you just hypothetic scenarios, but I just wanted you to believe in your own way. Be careful and be reasonable and masturbation will not be the obstacle for you.

One thing I noticed, I have become a lot more sensitive. I didn't need a tight grip when I MOd (just two fingers and lube), and honestly it wasn't that I didn't want to fantasise, I didn't need to. Is this normal?

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In general it's logic that you regain some sentience. It happens to me as well. Buy now I'm anticipating an infamous flatline which is going to be a contradiction to this logic process

Your making a lot of sense. I can't fault the logic. Thanks for taking time to write that and giving a damn. The funny thing is after I accepted that I MOd and I moved on, my brain stopped flooding me with images and I felt better. It's funny because everyone says that when they PMO they feel disgust and shame, which means when they MO all those images flood.back, and then they also feel disgust and shame. It's a cycle of association. It's not enough to break the chemical addiction, you need to break the cycle of negative emotion. And that battle is the hardest and like you say sometimes requires a therapist. In my case I'm not sure I need therapy, but I need to stop being hard on myself. I do ok.

So I thought to wait to this milestone to post more on my journal.

Porn free for two weeks, it's good.

Turns out that my two days of insomnia are more likely related to a heavy work out session on Sunday. Don't know why it happened but glad it has nothing to do with the detox.

MO was hard to control during the insomnia, the stress really made me crazy. So I am not going to focus on that, it happened and I will move on.

I watched a movie with my brother last night and the woman was pretty distracting, and there was some glimpses of nudity. I think I need to avoid these, I didn't have a major trigger but it might lull me into a false sense of security (make it seem ok and then lead to the bad things.)

Anyway, here is to another day.

3 weeks, pretty good. I feel pretty normal.

No MO for 4 days. Also pretty good. I actually want to have a wet dream. Sounds weird I know.

Ok, so I jacked it a few days ago. Was lying in bed, began thinking about sex and ... well the rest is history.

I saw an article today, talking about some protestor who decided to do a naked protest. Guess what, began to google it. And couple of nude images popped up. Yea that was dumb, served no purpose. And now I know my brain is gonna be weedling for the next few days. Self sabotage I think is what they call it.

So lets try giving myself some positive reinforcment. You saw a naked woman, that's it. Dont do it again.

You are healthy, you are strong, you are better than this. One drink is never enough is what AA say, and that's the same here. One PMO is never enough.

You know how you become someone who doesn't watch porn, by being someone who doesnt watch porn.

These women mean nothing, and you mean nothing to them. Even if you go your whole life alone, it is better to be alone and healthy than sick with someone else.

The price of freedom is responsibility. In order to be master of oneself requires the mind to control the heart which will control the desire. Someone who follows their desire is no longer free nor master.

Sacrifice that which you desire and you can find meaning.

Yep, lets see if that helps.