How do streaks and healing actually work?

Good post, but honestly I think you haven't cured PIED because you haven't done at least 90 days. You can repeat over and over again that days add up, but you know that you will never be healed without full comitment. Don't releapse, reach at least 90 days and than make a post about changes

 

I think for example if you reach 30 days and after than you jerk off everyday for like 7 days you are going to fuck up pretty much your improvement. Imagine thay you've been on some diet for 30 days and than you decide to eat fast food everyday for 7 days. You maybe lost 4kg in 30 days but you are gonna probably gain 3kg in those 7 days. You feel me?

 

By the way I am getting cured from PIED and trust me. Hard mode is only possible way to get cured!! From my experience I reached 20 days and than I relapsed and masturbated for like 5 days, most of my progress vanished

 

You first have to reach and maintain a 90 days streak to really understand how it works. If you are still struggling with PMO it only means that you haven't healed yet. At least if you can add a couple of months to every new streak, that could be a signal of healing.

 

Hey skaterdrew, I get exactly what you're saying and my personal experience seems to confirm it. Is going completely PMO free for 90+ days going to be the best way to heal? Absolutely. But there's a reason we're still here, and it's because we haven't been able to do that yet. Does that mean that all of our previous work doesn't count for anything unless we hit 90 days? Of course not. All of the time spend away from porn adds up.

I used to have severe PIED. To the point I bought some sketchy generic blue pills from India. Not good. Now I don't have any problems with it, despite still PMO'ing. Why? Because my time spent on it is so much less than it used to be. I used to spend, maybe 20 hours a week PMO'ing, probably a lot more but that's a conservative estimate. Now, if you average out all of my relapses, it's probably 30min to an hour a week. 2.5%-5% of what I used to be doing. It makes a huge difference.

Don't get me wrong, I want to drop porn completely. You can't be 100% healed until you do. But this mindset has helped me to minimize relapses because if you believe all progress is lost, might as well enjoy yourself for a while and have a huge binge. But if you believe that time spent is what matters, then after one little slip-up it's much easier to get back on track. My personal experience, anyway. Hope this is helpful.

 

Slips and relapses are part of the recovery process. No need to feel down or be ashamed of it. With that being said, letting yourself relapse every 14 days is not the way of getting rid of any addiction.

In order to rewire your brain - weaken and eventually abandon neurological pathway for good you have created by constantly repeating PMO behaviour - deep learned behaviour (DLB), you need to abstain from the DLP for long period of time and replace it with newly developed DLB. You need to literally regrowth gray matter in pre-frontal cortex and that takes time (+6 months).

Slips happen and are not a big setback as long as they don't escalate in full blown relapse, but slips shouldn't be preplanned. The reasoning behind it is that if you preplan to slip, let's say you decide to PMO once every 10 days, there's very high probability you'll crave PMO "reward" 9 days out of 10 which will only reinforce existing PMO neuropathway. That's why it's important that you decide to abandon PMO for good and if/when slip happens it happens. You analyze the triggers that caused you to slip, try to remove them and continue with abstention immediately. By deciding to never PMO again you remove expectation of "PMO reward" - cravings (no reason to crave for it, if it's out of your reach for life). If you do so and relapse on 10th day you'll use old PMO neuropathway only once in 10 days (1/10) instead of 10/10 (9 by craving reward + 1 by receiving reward). It's just how our brains work.

 

Simply speaking streaks help your body to recover mentally, physically, hormonally etc.

 

My PMO History:

• 1988 - April 2013 (25 years!): Regular PMO user, sometimes daily, sometimes for hours at a time
• May 2013: Quit my IT job to get away from computers, had a 9-month streak of no P right away. MO still continued but at a lessened frequency
• March 2014: Joined 12-step meeting. Streaks of no P got longer and longer as a result, from days to weeks to months at a stretch. MO continued, but even less frequently.
• Summer 2015: Stopped attending 12-step meeting. Gradually got back into more frequent use of P.
• January 2016: Returned to 12-step meeting. Met a group starting a new one in my hometown.
• February 2016: Started to help run a 12-step meeting in my hometown. Had an 18-month streak of no P. MO continued infrequently.
• August 2017: Suffered a major relapse that lasted for a full year. PMO became routine again, although less often than in the bad old days thanks to accountability software
• August 2018: Found NoFap and learned that MO was part of the problem.
• September 2018: Committed to no P, no M, and O only with my wife. That streak continues to this day.
• May 2019: Realized that P-subs were also a big part of the problem. Committed to no P-subs, too. That streak continues to this day.

That's my recovery journey in a nutshell. There were many ups-and-downs. It took a long time to break free. Radical lifestyle transformation helped. Community helped. I never did a full 90-day reboot, as I was married the entire period of my recovery.

It's a process. Give yourself time to change and heal. Never give up.

 

Very similar story to mine. I did manage to do +90 days hard mode streaks before 2017, but always relapsed after trying to establish healthy MO pattern after "reboots". It was only when I decided to abandon MO for good too, I managed to pull off two +6 months monk streaks with one 3-4 months long full blown relapse in-between. I guess for us, long term addicts (17 years of binge PMO and 25 of binge MO history in my case), MO has become so connected to PMO behaviour that stopping PMO without abandoning M too is not possible anymore.

 

P-subs?

 

https://www.nofap.com/glossary