I have been trying for than a year now to quit and its just one failure after the other. So I thiugh maybe I can go baby steps. What do you think guys about going like 30 days masturbation without porn will it help me progress or will it be a waste of time?
Ive never heard success stories following this method. Infact Iāve heard the opposite.
I personally wouldnāt go about it that way, semen is a vital resource. Draining it still has itās effects on your body, but I guess everyoneās different. Do what you thinks best. Goodluck.
I masterbate and I find it helps A LOT. But, Iām married (spiritually) and only fantasise about my SO and I have physical photos with clothes on (have to be safe these days with internet).
If youāre not in a relationship, I donāt know how youād do this without bad fantisising.
Eventually you decide what is safe behavior and what isnāt for you. For some, masturbation is heavily linked to ā ā ā ā behaviors, meaning that doing it creates a similar shame kind of feeling and thus itās not helping at all. For others, perhaps it doesnāt result in shame.
Think about the impact it has on you. Do you feel bad after masturbating without ā ā ā ā ? Does the version of yourself you want to be include this behavior? Can you openly talk to brothers in recovery and say āYeah, I masturbate and Iām fine with thatā? Could you speak about that with your family too?
I think those questions might help you find an answer for yourself.
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My mistake. I accidentally replied to another user rather than reply to the topic. Removed that comment.
This is gonna be long. I mean very long. I could add a TL;DR but i think you should read it.
I think everyoneās situation is different. What you said may be possible to do to get out of this addiction. (Personally i try to do hard mode because of its effectiveness.)
But keyword i used is āmaybeā. So itās a stretch. So i am not sure. If it does work recovery will progress slowly. So you have to be patient.
Everyoneās situation is different. Whatever ur method is the most fundamental thing is same.
This is the question:
Are you stepping out of this addiction of M? Are your streaks improving? Do you think you are becoming better and better against this addiction? Or are falling back to your habit with your current method?
If the answer is no then you are fooling yourself with current strategy.
You know what they say, doing same thing and expecting different result is the definition of insanity.
I will say one thing is must. You must stop P. forever. Full stop. For now, I donāt care if you M. If it is just M, you may have hope for recovery from this addiction. But P wonāt ever let you get away from addiction.
The reason is:
Iāve seen people that fall on day 130ā¦ and then binge ā ā ā ā . From my personal experience ābinging ā ā ā ā ā push back your recovery so far back. So much so that In my case, it has even reset my whole progress back to zero. ZERO!! It rewired my brain back to ā ā ā ā . You have no idea how much i regretted this.
So after realizing this the hard way, even if i relapsed on day 5 or day 10 or day 30, i would only M but never ever watch pornographic material.
I cut off P long time ago. My streaks became a little better.
But I didnāt learn my lesson. I soon realized i have substituted it with something else. Now i started using other erotic source. So now i had P-subs and it was preventing me from breaking this habit and kept me addicted. I stopped P-Subs. Lesson learned.
After that I stopped seeing everything. No visual stimuli.
No peeking basically. But I would still M. Soon i realized i have to fantasize a lot. And fantasizing is keeping me addicted. Here i hit a plateau and couldnāt improve my streak any more than this.
The thing is we do fantasize when we M. So i adopted my strategy to not fantasize if i M.
Meanwhile i was fighting tooth and nail to not M, Think and come up with plan, etc. But if i had to M, i did this:
Zero fantasizing while doing M. I tried to relapse as soon as possible. If i relapse i relapse.(then Get back on the game. Improve my strategy.)
And If i canāt relapse well It will give me blue balls. Which will demotivate you from doing M again.
Because i know how bad blue balls can be sometimes. There are ways to recover from blue balls that you can google but i didnāt do anything to ease that suffering lol(well itās not funny if you have it).
It was sort of like demotivator for me and i demotivated myself from doing M again.
Present day, i have come up with nice strategies and trying to stick with āhard modeā philosophy.
So, from my journey to avoid pitfall i will say this: when you really have to M because you feel cannot stop it(which is not true btw. You always have the power) then i will suggest this:
- No ā ā ā ā . Forget P. forget P-subs. Donāt even fantasize.
- Let it end asap. The sooner the better. DO NOT make it a session. Ever! (Btw i never had the problem which has the medical term āpremature ejaculationā. I donāt know if you will develop this undesirable condition with my method because i only experimented on myself. Be careful. Use at your own peril.)
- If you have blue balls well then you have blue balls.
- get back on the game. Improve your method to counter urge, trigger, basically this addiction.
This is only for those who are having serious trouble relapsing again & again. Some may say it is controversial but thatās my take on it. Itās only from my experience. take it at your own judgement or leave it if you think thatās best. ( i did mention āpremature ejaculationā. thatās something to look out for).
But the folllwing is always true. Itās always this fundamental question:
Are you holding yourself accountable to come out of this addiction. Are you really?
Or are you finding way to fool yourself and feeding this addiction?
And never be fine with M. No matter what. Whether you relapse or not. It has potential of deadly consequences.
But baby steps are fine. Just as long as you keep the fundamental question your priority.
If you did not understand anything let me know. 
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Sounds like a kind of extreme strategy to meā¦ Iād rather just meditate and focus on doing stuff.
I relapsed one too many times lately, but primarily because of my indecision. That is, I didnāt strongly believe itās bad to begin with. Now I am quite confident that it is very toxic and an addiction, not a ānatural compulsionā, as doctors tend to say.