I quit nofap but start no self-medication

General Discussion
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The last 2 months I had huge troubles motivating me for nofap. I knew that I don’t wanna watch porn but I didn’t really see why watching porn is terrible while watching Youtube is okay. Or doing sports to prevent an urge

The problem I have is not porn. I have no PIED, I have no social anxieties induces by porn, i have good job, a girlfriend. In fact, (i know people will hate me for that but continue to read, I will solve it) there is no tremendous damage for anymore me by porn itself. Don’t get me wrong. I had all these porn induced side effect at the beginning. But currently, I’m relapsing every one or two weeks. So, the negative side effects are very minimal. (no, I’m not saying porn is good. Just saying that the influence of these pictures is not as big anymore)

The last 2 months I saw that I’m just not able to quit porn completely. And the problem is, that I never stopped self-medication.

Instead of watching porn, I watched youtube, and twitch and it was relaxing because it basically gave me the same as porn did. It distracted me from my problems. So, some of you say: yea that’s exactly why I don’t watch youtube. But people in this forum are very creative and find different sources of numbing the pain. I hear it way too often in this forum without people knowing that they are doing the exact same thing!

How often do you read, keep yourself busy. Don’t allow time for any negative thoughts, or no time for boredom? That is exactly what I call self-medication. We have a problem which is why we wanna watch porn. To get distracted, so that we don’t have to address the problems we have. As long as we start running away, we will never be free of addictions!

Take this advice which you will see popping up at least once a week in this forum:

  • You have an urge to watch porn. To prevent yourself from relapsing, some people here suggest to do a workout until you are completely exhausted and your body is burning. That basically says, that at the end of the workout you will have a pain (exhaustion) which is bigger than the urge. This means that our brain gives the new pain priority. But in long term this is just as bad as giving in to the urge.

You can analyze different advice: I saw things like cut or squeeze you dick until it hurts. Take a cold shower, do pushups. All these things are doing one single thing. They inflict a pain larger than the mental pain which forces us to watch porn.
Sure they prevent you from watching porn. But they don’t help you at all.
This would be the same as when you say your feet are hurting and as a solution you smack your head against a wall. You will definitely not feel the pain of your feet anymore afterwards. But that didn’t solve the problem. As soon as the headache fades, your feet will start hurting again.

So, my concept now is: NO SELF-MEDICATION

  • I practice mindfulness, so that I learn to listen to the problems of my body and soul. Like this, I can understand my problems and find the perfect way to deal with them. Being aware of my body helps me to understand in which situations I try to flee from reality. Sometimes watching youtube is not bad. It is pretty relaxing and can lead to interesting topics. But sometimes it is just for selfmedication. The important ability we have to gain is to differentiate between these two.
  • my counter still counts my days of porn. Because that is what I owe my girlfriend. I don’t wanna look at other girls.
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I must say this is an individual based results. I want y’all to know why nofap started at the first place, fapping and porn affected lives on a real time basis. But it might be based on individual results, some of them might not have gotten the benefits of it or some didn’t felt any damages due to porn . But mostly did, had their life ruined due to porn , and how many success stories do we hear everyday on how nofap helped them. So it’s all on you, the results the, the effects are on an individual basis and their on own perspective.
Nobody has asked them to do nofap, but them realised something is wrong and taken the initiative with , not getting a 100 % success but, a belief and the hope of getting better.

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I never denied that.
I had all the negative effects too. as I mentioned.

I just believe that we shouldn’t push nofap forward by starting new bad habits. Like doing sports excessively. Or taking a cold shower every time one has an urge.

A person can have a huge streak because he has the habit to stay busy all the time by doing sports. So, he stopped fapping for 180 days. His PIED gone obviously and he’s feeling strong. I don’t deny that.

But what happens to that person if he gets an accident and can’t do sport at all? how does he cope with the feelings now? I bet, he will fall back into porn and he will wonder how this happened. The secret is, he never really cured his problems. He just covered it. How many stories did you hear of people having a huge streak, then fall back and can’t get up again? (hint, there was one just this week)

I guess everyone new to the journey has the believe that he just has to stay off porn for long enough and he will be free of the curse. But I don’t think that this is how it works

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why do you think you are addicted? What is the reason?
You say because of dopamine and stuff. But then, why isn’t every single person who has watched porn before addicted too?

Because they don’t need this source of self-medication. Either because they have a different one or because they are happy in life.
A person who is perfectly happy with how life is going doesn’t need an addiction.

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When quitting an addiction, replacement is very much possible. It happened to me as well, I went deep into gaming.

I think there’s nothing worse than PMO (unless you start smoking weed excessively, injecting opiates, etc).
When one quits PMO, their dopamine levels get very low very quickly, and one needs to replace it ASAP. Now, there are positive methods, which are hard to do (working out, running, socializing) and negatives methods, which are easy (Netflix, gaming, YouTube).
He/she will naturally gravitate towards the negative ones, but think about it, is game or YouTube really as bad as ■■■■? No, sure they are not one should spend their time on, but it’s the little step towards a normal life.
Slowly the person will realize that what they are doing(YouTube, etc) is negative for them and start another “quitting” cycle, replacing it will less negative activities and maybe one or two positive as well. The self-improvement cycle repeats.

You gradually became addicted and you will be “de-addicted” the same way. The way in is the way out.
I think it’s okay to indulge is such activities until you get a hold of yourself and slowly go further. No need to do things the hard way or be hard on yourself :slight_smile:

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Okay that is a good point too.

I think it is just dangerous if people don’t know that their new thing is an addiction too.
I guess it is important to know that replacement is an option but only temporarily.

In the end you have to do the step from “addicted to something” to “not addicted to anything bad”
People often see nofap as the holy grail. If they have beaten it, they have won.

There just are so many advice here on how to win in short term but so few tips on how to win in longterm

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I trust the rabit hole of NoFap, one sooner or later finds out what he/she needs to do.

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If we want to win in the longterm, we must feel the pain that we have been running away from. We do that by practicing body awarness, meditation, streching, working out, mindfullness anything that help us feel our body and supressed emotions.
So you are doing the right thing.

Focus on socializing and living the life fully, identifying the activities that we are avoiding because of emotions that we don’t want to feel.
So in this journey most of us will have to face discomfort such as going out when you have social anxiety.

Cold shower, push up, and working out is good in case of urge because it put our attention in our body and your focus is not in our mind, allowing the urge to slowly dissapear, you can do that without causing you pain.

Anyway I practice streching and yoga everyday, and my energy really changed over time, my voice became a lot stronger and joyfull, I am a lot more positive, I have way more energy than before, I am way more relax, and social anxiety has been reduced a lot. All of those benefits are coming naturaly without practicing any positive affirmation or visualisation, it’s like my personnality changed. Thanks to yoga and streching :slight_smile:

Also it’s impossible to do a no self medication method, we all self medicate because that is how society trained us. The most important thing is not to try to stop every bad behavior but instead add good new behaviors.

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There is no single path to winning at nofap. Different things work for different people. Our level of addiction varies from person to person as well.

The reason I turned to PMO I believe had to due with deep emotional pain from my childhood. I did choose to self medicate with PMO and now I’m having trouble stopping.

What behavior do healthy people have that we lack? I don’t think they dedicate time to PMO. When we learn to use our time correctly things in life can fall into place. This is just my opinion but an example of how we should look at nofap.

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This thread offers lots of food for thought. I am guilty of using YouTube as a replacement addiction myself.We seem to be wired to constantly seek a stimulating activity either to avoid boredom or because we don’t want to do something that we know we should be doing.Someone nailed it earlier with the line: identifying the activities we are avoiding because of the emotions we don’t want to feel.One of these emotions is boredom itself.This boredom that we dread so much should be embraced occasionally.It is really peace of mind.Let it happen.Don’t run.This is the simplest meditation.From this silence will come some of the most brilliant and profound thoughts and ideas if you are patient.

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Thanks everyone for engaging in this topic. There are some really amazing answers here which are what I wanted the people to think about and which shouldn’t be forgotten:

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In my current opinion, if you now only quit ■■■■ you will need another addiction otherwise you will be overwhelmed by the emotional pain which has been suppressed all the past years by ■■■■. Besides practicing nofap we also have to learn to live with these feelings of pain or figure out why we had them and that it is not necessary anymore to still feel them. The experiences and things we lived through will always be a part of us. We can’t change that, but we can choose how we think about them and how much they effect us now

I never thought about that. Sounds like a really good point of few. Thanks :slight_smile:

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Yes there is no single way to winning at nofap, but there is a tendency of people succeeding and sharing similar things and behaviors. there are things that work better than others.

What behavior do healthy people have that we lack? they are healthy with their body.
Look at yoga teacher for example, I don’t know a single yoga teacher depressed, or with low energy, or bad mood. They all seem very energetic, often sexy, and joyfull.
Why???

In my opinion it is probably because they are trained to feel their body and therefore their emotions.

But doing that alone is not enough, living the life we want to life and then things in life will fall into place.

I think there is an opportunity to create a very complete guide to help people who struggle with their life and want to be happy/succesfull/joyfull… and overcome this addiction.
I think this community is lacking this, people are going in all directions, loosing patience, relapsing, and loosing a lot of their times. We could share our experiences in a guide so the people coming here for help would not repeat our mistake.

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