Hello from Australia

Hey! I totally get what you mean. I have also tried nofap (before joining the website) for about a month, and god it feels amazing. It's just that after that, I thought now that I have it under control, let me masturbate once without porn; and that was it. I did it again after 3 days...right back to square one. This was months ago. I'm starting again now, because I've realized that I'm not at my full potential, and I can be much more. I need to get out of mediocrity and nofap is the main key to it.

Let's fight this together!

Cheers.

 

Good on yeah.

 

Check out the forum post I just made. It might give you some insight and maybe be of some use
https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/all-about-dopamine-and-pmo.192653/

 

Nice post, very informative.

 

W

Wow, thank you dude! It was more than 2 weeks ago when I wrote that, and I can't believe I've come so far.

I think keeping a journal is a great idea. Writing down words is always very powerful! Even I do something like that. I stick small sticky notes for each day and I write the good things I did. So a typical note would have "Did a 20 min cardio workout. Ate healthy dinner. NoFap day 12."
There were definitely moments when I almost gave in to the urges, but I somehow held it off. I think that you can do it too! Stay strong dude. One thing I do when I get the urges, is wait it out, and tell yourself why you're doing this; like talk to yourself out loud, it works!

 

Hey! I'm glad to see that you're at Day 26! I MO'd twice after my initial start. The first one was basically I was drunk, and what started as an itch, led to MO I don't know why I did it again tho. So far my streaks have been 39 days, then 7 days then I'm currently on day 9.
Let me tell you one thing, it definitely gets easier, and as soon as you fap, you instantly regret doing it, and you can see the difference as clear as day and night. Stay strong!

Btw, still porn free since 2 months

 

I'm happy that I could encourage someone!
I think yes, drinking might be a trigger. Btw it was a physical itch, not an itch to MO. But it may also be that after I'm drunk, I lose a bit of self control, regarding everything. You know how it is, you have 3 beers, and you're more like to agree in doing some stupid shit with friends

Also I think I've figured some of the triggers. One is thinking about loneliness. Others are (maybe) drinking and getting back to my room, boredom, random fantasizing... Now that I think about it, if I went over to my friends' place after getting drunk, I wouldn't have MO'd.

It's like our brains constantly come up with ways to rationalize masturbating. It's like "just try a little bit to test..", or "see if it still works", or "it won't hurt to do one time right? after all you haven't masturbated in ages"...
It's sort of funny how our brain comes up with all kinds of shit, like an addict to get us to slip.

Also, I read about the "chaser effect" in the forums here. It's like if you relapse after a streak, you're more likely to relapse again in a short period. It can be avoided, but it'll be tough. I guess that's why after my long streak and your long streak, we both broke it more than once while doing short streaks. One other thing that helps, is when you start getting an urge and you identify that the urge might get stronger, just get up and move. Just get out of the room, or go for a walk, or make yourself a snack. That small action, prevents you from slipping up.

Now, I'm happy that I'm fighting PMO and I've managed to improve myself so much. Also, after you get a 30 day streak, you feel a bit invincible, and that's an amazing feeling. I'm still going strong although there's a lot of stress around this time for me, so I guess I can do a bit more than my longest streak this time.

A piece of advice...an interesting analogy:
If a person goes to the doctor and finds out they are HIV+, then what does that person do? Doctor prescribes some medication, and asks them to take it. Say, that person fails to improve after trying one medicine. Would they give up? He/she would try every medication and every method in the world to fix it, because it's devastating to get AIDS. And that's how we should look at PMO. Instead of looking at it like a bad habit that you want to get rid of, think of it as a very harmful disease. Would you stop after trying one thing? (say 1 week streak). You must keep on trying until you succeed!
Let me know if your perception changes Mine sure did, and it helps

Cheers