@neveragaintw
This is a great question, there were plenty of things that I did that helped immensely. I think to succeed in nofap for starters you need a solid foundation, as well as something specific to happen to give you the drive to succeed. I started nofap a little over an entire year ago and like I said in the OP, most of the time I was still fapping 3 times a day. The funny thing is this 170 day streak, which is longer and more successful than most people ever achieve is also the first time I had ever gone over 6 days without fapping since starting nofap. I remember what gave me push I needed was a day when I went out with two friends to meet these 2 girls, everybody else hit it off and I had never third wheeled so fucking hard in my life. It sounds pretty cringe, but I just wanted to be popular with girls and I honestly thought I could achieve it if I was successful in nofap.
A big reason I had never had more than a week-long streak beforehand was mostly that of the foundation I was trying to build my streaks on, you will never find success by doing anything other than going full on cold-turkey. Drill it into your mind that porn is a relapse and edging is a relapse, unlike all the times before when I would waste hours a day watching far more porn than usual and edging until I inevitably fail, thinking that as long as I don’t orgasm it’s fine
Make sure you delete every single sexy, tempting picture you have from your phone or computer, and make it so impossible for yourself to look at porn that eventually your future self gives up trying to feed the urges because of just how impossible you made it for yourself. I remember being so fucking determined not to fail that I deleted absolutely every rare, beloved image or video or nude photos I’ve been sent off my phone, deleted my instagram, and put website blockers and adult site filters on my phone and PC. I literally deleted internet explorer, disabled microsoft edge, used my site blocker to block every website I had off the top of my head that I thought would ever be even slightly tempting. Even more extreme, I put an impossible to remember password on the site blocker, edited the fucking google chrome policies to make it so that I couldn’t enter the extensions page, couldn’t enter incognito mode, and couldn’t turn off safe search. This helped me an incredible amount.
Another mistake I think people make is them trying to promise themselves that they will absolutely never PM again in their lives, which just isn’t realistic. Do you have any idea how terrible that feels to an addicted brain? Going 0 to 100 like that just isn’t something you brain will allow, you will tell yourself that “Oh, well I only have a 2 day streak going, so since I’m so close to the starting line I’ll fap one more time and then stop permanently for good! Since I told myself that I will never PM again anyway…” Instead of this, just give yourself a goal of 90 days, and tell yourself that after that you can binge as much as you want. Whether you actually do binge after a successful 90 days is up to you, but I promise you this is what carried me through those first 30 days. Every time you have an urge just remind yourself how within reach your goal is, which will cause the urge to either subside or be far more manageable. Your brain will try and trick and twist your thoughts and bargain and do whatever it can to get to you bust a nut, so your conscious self needs to bargain for a reason to keep the streak going.
There are plenty of methods that work to let urges subside, cold showers and pushups until failure genuinely work great, but it just isn’t practical. The last thing you will think of doing while having urges is doing something as uncomfortable as a cold shower or pushups, I feel like those work best in the mornings or whenever you don’t have an urge to prevent them for the next couple of hours. Something that I remember working well is music. I think everyone has atleast one song that takes them back to a good moment in their lives. A time when the song was playing while you accomplished something really amazing, or a time when you were a better person, or were having a fantastic time. Playing those songs that bring you back to those times get you fucking hyped up or happy and allow you to really take a close look at your actions. Look into your Spotify or itunes or whatever, find a song that is strung up with your memories in a positive way.
Honestly it was smooth sailing for me for the most part after the 40 day mark, they say that habits build up after 27 days of repeated actions, I literally built up a habit of avoiding porn, anytime a tempting image was put in my face I shunned away from it immediately, my downfall was this reflex becoming weaker, my willpower fading and not staying active in the nofap community any longer. I’m sure there are hundreds of other reasons I made it as far as I did but I can’t currently remember them, but enjoy these for now.
