x

x

Right you are man! Def have developed a keen sense for getting a girl off with the tongue. All the best on your journey. Hang in there. As someone who had recovered and then relapsed into it after that relationship ended; just stay positive and keep trying your hardest! You are not alone and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Maintain the will power!
Cheers

Don't give up

Please do! I would love a summary and your thoughts on it! Sometimes it can be tough dealing with the unknown. Personally, the unknown timeline seems hard to manage and stay positive. It?s a little depressing thinking how long it may take. But I guess best to just take it one day at a time and look forward to positive results!

Thank you....I had a rough go of it the past couple days......I had a good steak going. From February 10th to March 26 I went with PMO. March 26th I had a relapse but after I thought I was still motivated and ok. Yesterday I relapsed twice. And today I did as well. I had my brain all messed
Up...... I was way off. Today I don?t know why I didn?t have the will power to resist.....the kicker is I feel I lost my partner. After this corona thing hit I haven?t heard I much from her. She used to call me everyday on her way home from work. We are both essential so she is still going to work, as am I. As and athlete I struggle when I don?t have a clear goal to accomplish, and in the past this is exactly where I fall back. When I don?t have the drive to get better to have great intimacy with a lady I feel sensual with; I fall off and relapse.......uggh. Tomorrow is another day. Need to reset the clock I guess and stay positive for the future. Thanks for sharing this, it was great to see it! I didn?t O the second time yesterday or when I did it today. All I can focus on is how much better with the lady friend or even just solo without visual stim. Thanks for sharing, I find it very helpful to listen to what you have to say!

Hello all,
      Some people feel that playing with their penis without ejaculating (termed as edging in medical terms) is harmless. Let me warn u , this is very dangerous for porn induced erectile dysfunction (pied) since the dopamine peaks more in the brain. Completely not thinking about girls/porn/fantasy is what is required for the duration of ur recovery. I have researched the same on NOFAP. please make a note of the same. By the way I am 31 years of age and have been masturbating since about 15 years to internet porn. I just started my reboot last month. My height is 6 feet, weight is 90 kg. I am a hypothyroid patient. How long will it take me to recover? My morning wood has disappeared.

Hi Bilbo, you story sounds similar to mine and we are about the same age (I'll be 30 in two weeks) except that you are 4 months ahead of me. Any improvements in the last month or so?

Slow progress is still progress and those morning woods are a definite sign of improvement. 180 days is also a huge landmark, your addiction should be pretty weakened by this point all you have to do know is wait for the libido to kick in. This may not be the case for you of course, but based on everything I read so far, the real changes shoul start after the 6 months, so hang in there you are close.

As for the girlfriend question ,it's a little complicated, I have this girl I'm kinda seeing, we had sex several times in the early stages of my reboot (during first 20 days if I remember correctly), I will see her again soon so maybe well have sex again. I realize the importance of going hard mode and so far in my reboot my only ograsams were from sex, I cut out masturbation completely along with porn. And while hard mode is defenetly crucial reviewing is even more beneficial and can speed up things tremendously, at least in my case and I assume many others. So I' m kinda conflicted about this one, on one hand I did go hard mode from day 20 untill now (day 63) but on other hand I do want to rewire and get my natural libido faster. I think, given the opportunity, that I will just be open with her, admit my situation and explain in details what I'm going trough. Hopefully if she agrees to help and stay by my side, I may recover even faster. Everyone who had an understanding partner by their side and who was completely honest with them (easier said than done I know) recovered much faster and much better. Just don't lie to them as essentially you are lying to yourself.

That being said, even if everything goes right with her and she decides to stay with me trough this journey I don't plan on having sex all the time, I'll take it slowly and see where it gets me, increasing or decreasing the frequency depending on the results.

Bilbo,
Thank for the story.  It is encouraging to hear from you.  I am a very long rebooter and what I can say is that at minimum I feel proud I have overcome my porn addiction.  I have been abstinent over two years now from porn.
I still have a long way to recover... and in this time since I have felt largely sexually lifeless I have been afraid to pursue sexual intimacy--since I don't want to disappoint myself or others I pretty much stopped trying to get into relationships.
However, I have had a few decent oral sexual encounters... and I have recently started trying to date again.  I am really hoping to find a high quality woman who cares for me and I can finally open up about my condition... and that she will stay with me and we can experience my healing together. 
I shall update when such an event transpires.
Keep up the good work!  I look forward to updates in your story and your future success story.

Hi Bilbo, Hi Relentless,

Thank you for sharing your stories. It's really helpful. I already fight this for almost two years and still can't fully recover. I can say that with time it starts to get better, but stopping with any sexual activity is a must. Otherwise your dopamine levels get too high and your brain addiction gets worse. Having a girlfriend doesn't necessarily help because when I get better then we have sex and then I feel weaker again. Still have to use viagra to be able to have sex. Actually I think that it's hard to get totally "fixed" when you have a girlfriend. Total stopping on PMO is a must. However I have found an interesting whole in this mechanism - it helps temporarily but gives hope. Try to measure your prolactin blood level - it's a cheap blood test. If you are addicted to porn/masturbation and having a flatline then the level should be higher than standard. Come back to me with the results - I'm curious and I suspect that due to porn/masturbation addiction it will be as mine - few times higher than it should.

Reading this and similar stories leads me to believe that there are 2 types of people with PIED and they require 2 completely different approach for the reboot. Both groups must avoid porn and masturbation if they mean to recover, but the orgasms is where they differentiate:

First group (myself included) benefit heavily from rewireing with real life partners. The more rewireing we do the better it gets. I had days when I thought I was flatlining but as soon as I would get next to my girl I felt the desire for sex and the erections. Orgasms from sex didn't really set me back, I had sex 3 times in 4 days and the next time I saw her 2 days later, the same situation, we would kiss and touch and I was hard again even though I wasn't super horny or anything during the day before that. Point is, when I'm with her, my libido and erections are there, and the  more I rewire the better both erections and sex get. I have also read many similar stories to this one, and the conclusion of all of them is REWIREING.

The second group benefit from cutting orgasms even from sex (exception being wet dreams). These people usually suffer from a more serious form of PIED, though it doesn't usually have to be that way. For them rewiering just doesn't work because their dopamine receptors are fried even more then the guys from the first group. So they first need to let them heal before attempting to rewire. So if you thing you fall under the second group then aside from cutting P and M you must also cut sex and orgasms as well untill you see improvement.

Both groups can heal, there are many success storied and journals of people from both groups that did. But I think that we need to start accepting that there is no ONE reboot and that there are, at least, two different options considering how severe your PIED is. There could be more, time will tell, but the more we figure this out the eaier it would be for someone starting from 0 to figure out what is the beast way to go.

Not really related to this particular thread, sorry for jumping in like this Bilbo, but the last comments made me want to share my 2 cents.

It's quite possible that people who can get fully or decently hard to porn fall into the first category, and that people who can't even get hard to porn fall into the second one. Again just something based on my observations and things that I read but it seems to fit the formula. Ceretalny something worth discussing on a thred of its own.

Warrior, Conan;
1, I had a prolactin level measured about a year ago and it was in the normal range. Same with my testosterone levels and TSH levels.  You propose an interesting thought, but it doesn't seem to correlate with me.  Furthermore, I had a penile doppler performed and that ruled out venous leak.

2. I think a dichotomy may exist for "severe" cases and it may be quite like you state.  I especially like the break down of those who could still get hard to porn but not with partner vs those who could not get hard at all.  I fell into the second state... for about two years I saw urologists who told me it was all in my head and that porn was good for me, so I grew increasingly less aroused by porn, yet masturbated every day (sometimes several times a day) with an increasingly limp penis desperately hoping suddenly I would get hard.  It was very tough to go through in my very early 20s.
    Thus, I think a further dichotomy may be had between those who stopped soon after losing erectile strength to porn and those who continued to PMO for prolonged periods despite increasingly weak erections. Pertinent factors may (amount of time spent seeking novel porn) and (frequency of masturbation with sub-par erections to porn).  In which case "Severity" may be correlated to the product of (amt time seeking porn)*(frequency of PMO with weak erections).
    I have thought about factors feeding into severity a lot... people in these forums say that those with sexual histories take less time to rewire than those whose whole sexual experiences have been with porn.  I think the factors that feed into the behaviors that cause excessive PMO also contribute.  Perhaps: anxiety/guilt at feelings of addiction to porn, religious fear associated with the habit of PMO, use of PMO as a (poor) coping mechanism, fetishizing one body part or non-human P like hentai.  I am suggesting that these factors affect how intensely the brain rewires to porn vs real humans.
    For example, a person who feels religious guilt associated with using porn may be more susceptible to the brain rewiring because the pleasure is mixed with such intense shame and becomes recognized as a less desirable process by the brain.  Or, those P users who only ever watch butt stuff may be more susceptible to PIED than those who watch more vanilla sex because they become accustomed to the one part of the body or the one act that arouses them the most (while going through the whole sensitization and desensitization that YBOP discusses).
    **if we had a separate forum segregating users into length of recovery (+1 year, +2 year, +3 year), we may be able to more easily see which factors the VERY LONG rebooters have in common aside from the shorter rebooters.

Well, I wrote a lot.  Biblo, thanks for allowing your journal to become a widespread discussion.  Next time I'll try to post this in my journal instead.

Made a new thread for this topic, no need to highjack Bilbo's thread. Fell free to contribute there.

http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=19319.0

Bilbo,

    I think enough other stories show that given enough time and rewiring we shall heal.  We definitely seem like PIED and not other causes.  We have severe cases, but we can do this.
    I honestly don't know what this is like with a steady partner... what you think is best seems a reasonable course.  I had dated two girls during this process and it seemed the more time i spent with them the more I actually got some swelling and even some mild erections from being with them and making out with them and even decent erections at times.  However, I didn't feel either girl was emotionally available and the relationships really fizzled out and I did not really get to experience rewiring beyond making out/cuddling and just two or three blow jobs...  I think if I had a consistent partner who made me feel valued and loved I would have continued that feeling of slowly gaining arousal from being with her.
    I post this to state that being with a romantic partner is probably quite helpful even just in the sense that you can enjoy being around her and continue to rewire in that manner.  Keeping P-free is huge.  You are already 7 months into healing.  Overcoming the addictive/compulsive mentality is amazing.  Beyond that we will figure out how to rewire in time.

Good luck man, I'll keep you updated.

These posts have been a very interesting read. I hope you are following course OP

Thank you Bilbao. My journal is below. I feel a bit low today. I think it's due to a mixture of emotion. I was dating a girl for a very short time and she ended last weekend as I couldn't get an erection. I decided last Sunday to do some research and sort myself out. I'm 6 days no PMO, and NoFap. Plus I've started reading Models by Mark Manson.

http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=19373.0

Wet Dream ARE a great sign of recovery, once you start having them regularly you are close to being cured, keep going, you are getting close.

Any update on your situation Bilbo? Haven't updated since the wet dream.

If it makes you feel any better I don't really believe in hard mode. I'm not saying that people haven't cured themselves by doing it but all the stories I've heard took a year or more to heal and I honestly think they would have healed either way, as long as they avoided porn and masturbation. It you train your mind to abstain you will end up abstaining for the rest of your life, it is a great thing when it comes to overcoming porn addiction but not so great when it comes to sex, for brain abstinence is abstinence, be it from pmo or sex. So the best advice I can give you is have sex with your girlfriend and get your brain used to it. Of course take it slowly, maybe once every two weeks, then once in 10 days, then once a week etc. Get your body accustomed to orgasming from sex and slowly decrease time between orgasms as it gets more and more used to it. I have seen progress by doing this as have many others, just be prepared that it will take a year or more before you can have sex every day without problems, it's a slow progress but it is progress. And of course stay away from porn and masturbation as you already know. As long as you do things can't get worse, they can only stay the same or improve, that's my mantra.

Also don't blame porn for everything, depression and anxiety can fuck you up just as much, seen it with my own eyes, so try to work on that as well. And try to raise dopamine as much as you can by getting enough sleep, avoiding coffee and energy drinks, avoiding alcohol and eating healthy. I know these thing are always thrown out there whenever you read about rebooting but they do help, even if not obvious immediately.

And finally, DON'T COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHER PEOPLE, COMPARE YOURSELF TO YOU FROM ONE YEAR AGO. That is the only way to know if you are progressing or not. When I compare myself with me from one year ago it's like night and day, even though I'm not fully cured, I would lie if I said that the progress is not clearly visible. I'm sure that if you compare yourself with you from one year ago, you will see improvements as well, even if they are minor, as long as they are there you are going forward and you will get there.