P.A.W.S. - what are they, cure, duration

When I started my recovery back in July 2019, by Jan 2020 my libido returned. At the time I was doing no PMO, but seeing someone without orgasm which I think helped. In Jan 2020 I had an orgasm which sent me into a flatline of 7 months.

So 7 months until I got my libido back, then 7 months of flatline. After that I think was when PAWS very gradually came on. It might have been slightly later, I can't remember.

 

I'd say that's an apt description of it, yeah. My opinion is that it's of benefit to us to remind ourselves that there is passive healing going on as long as we don't engage with porn, so as to not lose hope if hands-on attempts to fix ourselves don't pan out. Loss of hope can be crushing and lead to bad decisions and, worst of all, relapse. I also think some of us (including myself) are daunted by the idea of having to take a more active approach to healing via emotional work, because we don't even know where to begin to start mending ourselves, given that we don't have any obvious events of a damaging nature in our lives, or stubborn feelings that would lead us to cope with porn. It's an uncomfortable idea, at least to me, because I don't have a clear path to trace to anything substantial that would make me want to use porn besides the pleasure.

Some of us can barely absorb information properly, or read books without getting distracted by random disjointed thoughts. It just seems like an impossibility to do any meaningful work on myself while in PAWS because of the dysfunction of my brain and my lack of energy. I have no idea how I can type this coherently at this point because in any offline scenario I feel absolutely retarded.

To be honest, I think one reason I'm so anchored to my PC is that I can see my true self in my writing, and it's become a way to cope. The version of me that has to talk to employers and family and friends is nowhere near this measured, and I can't be proud of him.

Agreed. And good luck! I'm going to mount some efforts of my own to at least talk to people as soon as I feel a little more confident, but I'm in the rough right now.

 

This is my biggest challenge. I have never been 100% sure that porn is my problem because I can get it up to real-life girls and online girls within seconds. I have other very good reasons for believing it's porn-related, but the libido thing injects doubt for sure.

I like going to public places because I might see a cute girl there, but I think the excitement mainly comes from an emotional place. Without girls, though, the idea of going to public places is definitely bland, and I know I can't fully enjoy them either. Feels like I'm being held hostage if I have to go with other people. It's tragic.

 

Awesome discussions going on at the moment. Thanks guys, it's reassuring to read all of these quality insights.

I'm 3 weeks short of 4 years and I'll add my two cents:

I had sex during months 4-8. What I noticed was that the sex caused temporary symptoms--most of you have captured the feeling, such as decreased masculinity, tightness in the brain, insecurity, higher anxiety, etc. But I think it's worth noting that it never touched the deeper narrative, so to speak. And what I mean by that is that I view recovery as this undercurrent of processing that is constantly taking place beneath the currents of everyday life. I'm processing ignored emotions, past sins, missed opportunities, and things of that nature. My body is also processing the damage done on the physical plane, like fucked up frontal lobes, and everything you'd find on a place like yourbrainonporn.com. Sex never set foot on this plane. All of the repercussions were surface level and went away after a couple of days.

Another insight: frontal lobe disintegration is now more evident than ever. My self control was in tatters as I hit rock bottom. I was a throbbing, wobbly, exposed impulse artery. Now, I spend no money, have full control over my decision making when it comes to trigger avoidance, and am getting better at not giving away my power to others. I'm a recovering people pleaser, and I attribute that to having that frontal lobe control.

I think there are less recovery stories because a large crop of dudes did recover. Derjogge, Don Quixote, and a couple other guys whose usernames I don't remember. A good 4-5 guys conquered this thing and moved on. I remember their stories vividly.

I also think that this new generation has a higher chance of being more severely damaged. We're the true kindlers. The hardcore edgers. Instead of 1-2 years we're facing 3-5. Could be wrong, but that'd be my guess.

As far as how I'm doing, for the past month or so I'm realizing just how much PAWs was affecting me. I was only able to see 50% of the world around me. The fuzziness made the universe opaque. We all know the fuzziness. I could barely lift my head up, constantly starting at my shoelaces.

My vision is so much better. Crazy to fucking process the notion that PAWs is so severe that it obscured my vision, but it did. I saw things in 2D for damn near 4 years. Now, my brain is flirting with three dimensional eyesight. And this is just one example of just how fucked my brain and body were. Some days I wake up and can see the shine on my car, and the ripeness of late summer leaves.

Sadly, I'm one of those cyclical cases where I'll have ~30 days of decency followed by 1-3 weeks of hardcore symptoms. This period is like a wave, with the final day being the worst of them all. I have zero fuckin' clue as to why this happens, and I don't ever plan on grasping the concept. What blows is that the difficult times are still really fucking difficult. Maybe not as severe as they used to be, but they're still super rough, which is a scary prospect. You'd think I'd be somewhat coasting by now.

Dreams are big to me. And my dreams, at least as of late, have skewed towards positivity, and traipse around on more imaginative terrain. No more constant nightmares and relapse scenarios. I'm hooking up with girls, I'm doing more interesting things. If this keeps up, then I'm optimistic that recovery is very much on the horizon.

I do think that time is the ultimate healer, and my reasoning is that my brain has become less fetishized over the past 2 months. I'm finally getting over that porn-skewed sexuality, where all I want to do is use women to masturbate with. It still comes back during the rough times, but I often find myself wanting intimacy. And I haven't touched a girl in ~3 years. Things continue to get incrementally better in all aspects.

On the flip side, I could also both understand and entertain the idea that the final hurdle would involve intimacy.

I don't know who spoke about girls subconsciously knowing that we're damaged, but I buy into the idea completely. I'd love to start rewiring, and I'd do it in ah heartbeat, but my gut tells me that my pride would get crushed by the pursuit of women. But, ironically, I still do have thoughts of entering the dating market more and more. I work with women and it depends on the day. Some days, I'm charismatic and have "the presence". But I still have days where I'm scared of interaction because I know my vibes are off. On those days I do my shit with my head down and hope that my reputation hasn't been fucked with. I don't want to be the ignorable guy anymore. Tired of being a wallflower.

I will say that on the days that I do have that charisma I become so fuckin' confident that things on The other side will be fuckin' glorious. We all know that during PAWs every single fucking thing is difficult. Almost zero joy is to be had, and everything has to be either ignored or forced. But during those slivers of goodness, I feel somewhat propelled. What a difference it makes to truly desire something, as opposed to doing EVERYTHING in survival mode. Boy oh boy am I fucking sick of survival mode. 4 years of it is enough dude.

Anyways, I really like what's being said these days. Can't wait to leave, though, because I want to be free of this utter god damned madness. I'll post a recovery story and move on for good.

 

Also, no matter what I believe, thanks @mentorr for digging up the data and also for experimenting. I'm very excited to hear about what you discover.

 

Guys, is it possible to recover after kindling?

 

Thank you friend, I don't know what the end result will be but hopefully there can be some forward movement and we can learn something in the process. I'll keep everyone posted.

 

Thanks so much guys for posting on here. Really this thread is keeping me going. Mentor's intelligence, brain fog's great writing, and the supportive people on here are helping out so well. I will thank you guys and remember you ALL. It's amazing how you guys are sharing without any proper thinking and in this absolute suffering. Let's beat paws, and show the world how bright we shine!

 

All of your other symptoms are consistent with PAWS and long-term porn consumption though so I wouldn't question it too much, you're not the only one to say that their libido has remained unaffected either. I find it amazing that you're at 280 days, my longest run with an intact libido is about 6. At least you can be confident in your ability to stay away from it no matter what, whilst that's still a big question mark for me.

Hopefully, KO.

Kindling just means it's going to take longer than it needed to be.

 

Oh yeah, for sure. I intend to let sleeping dogs lie. It just gnaws at me from time to time when I worry that I'm not over the target at all, even though I know how vile porn is and will never use it again. I also never had a PAWS "honeymoon" where I felt amazing and could clearly tell when I entered PAWS the moment that amazing feeling dissipated.

Despite these uncertainties, I also feel strange and unwell when I get aroused, among other things that tell me that porn is the problem, or at least a massive part of it. It may be a combination of porn, all-nighters and late nights, eating junk food and overeating out of boredom, little exercise, scarce sunlight and fresh air, etc. And in this case I also think porn caused or helped worsen some of the others, because, for instance, I'd stay up late nights chasing my porn habit.

As for me reaching 280 days with my libido intact, it was definitely not easy, but I appreciate the perspective because you're right; I don't feel too worried about it anymore. If it helps with your question mark: I credit getting this far to the fact that I decided to alienate pretty much every female contact with whom I had history. I also had to perfect the art of turning my head 180 degrees in less than a second whenever I see something potentially triggering, because the longer the stimulus is allowed to remain, the higher the risk of relapse becomes.

My mind is so unreliable that I literally do the Dog Whisperer thing to keep a thought from turning into a relapse—even though those thoughts are very rare nowadays. I laugh at this from time to time but, man, it hurts to live every day like you don't have agency over your own body.

 

So it's time to revive this topic again. For more than a year and a half of active attempts to reboot, I realized for myself that the only reason for our PAWS and our being here is the effect of Kindling, Kindling. Enough attention should be paid to this topic on the forum. Now I doubt that such parameters as the age of the beginning, the edging, and the genres that you managed to reach matter at all. Even I, who am considered a fairly heavy drug addict, with many hours of edging and terrible genres on my front pages, after 3 weeks I began to get good effects from abstinence. Perhaps the figure of 90 days really matters, and after 3 months of my first attempt to quit, I would have already been healed. But Gary Whistlon, speaking of 90 days, apparently did not know about the effect of kindling yet

 

Each of us was stuck in this temporary situation as an actor in the movie "Groundhog Day", he began to go crazy from the painful monotony of one day, which was repeated day by day. With each of my kindling after a few sober months, I got worse withdrawal symptoms. The situation is complicated by ignorant people who run into the topic, and try to confuse and simplify everything, focusing on childhood injuries, lack of parental love, or bullying at school. . Every new person who comes here with a severe addiction, unfortunately, will not be able to quit on the first attempt. And it will get into the kindling wheel, or attempts to have sex too early, when the body is not ready for it yet.

 

Can you please define what kindling exactly is in terms of porn addiction?

 

Bro you're right, i completely healed after my very 1st attempt of reboot, it took only a month for my libido to return and my brain to be normal or I'd even say better than normal, i thought i was cured forever and this one month was just a bad dream, the very next day i got recovered i O'd with my gf, which put me back into flatline, fast forward to 3 years of multiple orgasms and trying and testing out every god damm thing I'm still stuck in here. Currently I'm 6 months into recovery and not cured yet, my highest streak of reboot is 7 months. But one thing I've noticed is that after very relapse which was mainly from O by sex, my symptoms became less severe than before, but they were still unbearable.

 

I'm not familiar with the "Dog Whisperer"?

 

The former.

 

Like, snapping one's fingers and making a sound with one's mouth to redirect attention. In hindsight it was a weird example, but the principle is what I'm getting at. Snapping my fingers, shaking my head rapidly, getting up to move—these are much more effective at removing myself from a risky situation than reasoning with myself ever was. At one point I was probably able to persuade myself out of a relapse by scaring myself with the consequences, but now I need a distraction. My hypofrontality is critical.

On a more positive note I'll say that I feel a lot better nowadays in terms of the breathing issues I had in January, and sometimes I actually feel like I'm not a lost cause. Still not sure if the breathing issues were from protracted caffeine withdrawal or if they were just a belated Christmas present from kindling with porn, though.

 

Groundhog Day! Great movie and a pretty fitting comparison to working through an addiction.