My Success and Motivations

Hi everyone, I haven't been to active on the forums recently but I'm finally on my first successful streak where I feel like my streak does not have an end in sight. A couple months ago I tried starting nofap, and after trying and failing a couple of weeks my longest streak previously was 46 days. Now, starting again strong at the end of December, I'm around 60ish days (don't really count anymore). This will be long, but I have had to make so many changes in my life to actually feel confident about my streak. The first 46 day streak I had, even though it was long I always felt like I was on the edge of losing it, and eventually I did. I think my experiences could help some people to not take the actual streak of nofap so serious, because when you focus more on the time period you are taking a break than the real changes you need to make in your life, you aren't actually going to last long.

First, I want to say I believe the most important factor that is helping me stay strong is quitting smoking weed. I used to smoke everyday, and even though I strictly only ever smoked at night, I feel like doing drugs or consistently drinking is very bad for getting over a porn addiction. One of the biggest problems is self control, and when you let yourself go with drinking or doing drugs, it makes it harder to control yourself to stop watching porn. Also, smoking weed especially hurt the process. You smoke weed and you kind of just mentally check out for hours, and you get used to this type of feeling. In the same way,*trigger warning* that kind of triggered me where we all know the process of searching up porn for hours, binging for hours just to unsatisfyingly finish. You get used to the feeling of literally wasting your time for hours, even though you know how much of a waste of time it was.

Next, what helped me is just learn to ignore your penis. Don't touch it. Don't get yourself excited and edge for a couple of minutes or whatever, because that excitement will eventually boil over and will almost definitely lead back to porn when you let your excitement get too intense. That is another huge change that I made alongside quitting smoking, and it was really difficult, but this time on my streak I had to try very hard to not get myself excited and ever touch myself. Now, 60 days in it really isn't difficult, but you need to stop that habit immediately

That being said, I don't believe in doing a hard mode cleanse. If the urge gets too strong, instead of prolonging an intense urge of excitement, squash it immediately. Don't look at porn, don't look at pictures of girls online, if you have privacy or when you do get privacy make it a goal to get hard, masturbate, and finish as fast as possible. Think of it literally as just a tool to ejaculate, not as a tool for excitement. Very quickly you will realize how unsatisfying masturbating without any tools or graphics is, but at the same time your excitement will die faster than you realize. I think it definitely helps, and after the first or second time of masturbating literally to squash the urge, you will probably just get lazy and not feel like doing it anymore because it just doesn't feel that great, but it is definitely a stress reliever. In this last 60ish day streak I've probably only masturbated maybe 4 times, and those 4 times were in probably the first month or so.

Rebooting my mind
I know a huge worry in a lot of people's minds are how long will it really take to reboot? From my experience, my mind is really only starting to reboot now at the two month mark. It is an immediate difference too, I had a terrible case of PIED, and now I am able to get excited naturally with my girlfriend (for the most part), at almost any time of the day. For a long time in the beginning of my recovery, I would only be able to have sex when I woke up due to my morning wood, and I was never able to get hard any other time of the day unless I just so happened to get excited randomly. I will say, though, rebooting will definitely take longer than two months. Keep in mind this is my second long streak going, and even after I relapsed the first time after my 46 day streak, I still never watched porn nearly as often as I did beforehand. I hear this a lot and it is definitely true, do not get discouraged if you relapse, every streak you go on without porn your brain is improving, and every streak you start makes your next streak just a little bit easier. I also want to assure you that I did watch A LOT of porn. It has been a huge part of my life since before I was even really going through puberty, and by no means was I a simple case of porn addiction. If you want an estimate of how long it will probably take to reboot, it will take at least two months, I would say average maybe around 100 days.
I've read cases of people that took over a year, and I think that number scares a lot of people. To be able to stop an addiction for so long to JUST start to see results is a very scary thought, and that's a thought for me personally that made my will power weaker every time I thought about watching porn. I will assure you, though, when your brain starts to reboot, you will know it immediately, and once it does you will not want to go back.

Kegal Workouts
One thing that I also believe is helping my recovery is doing kegal workouts. I tried doing kegals a couple months ago, and I was consistent for a time but I never really got too serious until this last month. I won't go into details of how to work them out or any of that, but in my experience, reverse kegals were easier to work out and get very strong, and regular kegals I still need to work on. Personally, I do feel like after getting my regular kegal muscles strong to a certain point, it becomes much easier to get an erection. It took me about 3 weeks of it though to really notice a lot of progress, and you have to do it pretty consistently. If you are watching tv or something, try to work them out but in my experience it's not something you can just do for 5-10 minutes a day and you'll make progress. Thats how I did it the first time and I saw almost no results. It honestly takes a lot of time, around 30 minutes when you get started, but since you can do it almost anywhere I think it's worth putting in the time.

I won't claim it to solve everyone's problems, but I do think it's something to do to help change your perspective on your penis as a muscle to exercise than a muscle to use for just masturbation. Also, you can do kegals while soft! Do not purposely get yourself excited to do kegals to try and work the muscle. Kegals should be done while you are not excited, so like I said earlier, you don't build up the excitement over time.

Superpowers I've Gained
First, if you want a super honest benefit of nofap, my favorite thing is definitely THE WET DREAMS. I know a lot of people are afraid of wet dreams because they think it might be ruining your streak, but it definitely does not. I have wet dreams more than ever now because I just don't ejaculate that often. If I go an entire week without ejaculating, I will 100% have a wet dream at least once that week. Also, wet dreams are AWESOME. They are more fun than masturbation will ever be, and the feeling of ejaculation is way more intense than any masturbation will ever be, even with porn. If you follow what I said earlier with masturbating just to relieve the excitement from building up, again like I said you will realize how unsatisfying this sort of masturbation is. However, on the flip side, now you can enjoy wet dreams that will bring way more satisfaction than watching porn, masturbation, and even sometimes real sex can ever bring you. A lot of people will probably completely disagree with me on this, but I can honestly say that having wet dreams is so satisfying that wet dreams ALONE will make me not want to go back.

Next, I actually have made a lot of progress in bed. I can get turned on by the touch of my girlfriend now, which I haven't been able to have in literally my entire life. From my first girlfriend in high school to now, I have never been able to be turned on and made excited unless I was very lucky, and now I can get made excited pretty much any time of the day. It came out of nowhere too, and every day my body responds to physical touch better and better. It might feel like your streak is not doing anything for your brain, but once the reboot truly begins you will make even faster progress that will reinforce you not wanting to relapse.

Kegals have also taught me to last much longer in bed, and now I have something else to focus on with my penis than thinking about masturbating. My entire thought process is moving away from "am I or am I not going to masturbate" to thinking about kegal goals I've set for myself and goals I try to set for myself in bed. It's all about completely changing your thinking and your habits, and the longer your mind is focused on "I just need to not watch porn" the longer you are actually just focusing and thinking about porn. You need to change things in your life to not distract you from porn, but to make porn not important anymore. I still have urges, and every day I still think about wanting to look at at least pictures of girls, but every time I think of my progress, the wet dreams, I don't feel like I need to anymore. If it really gets too much, I'll go to my bathroom and rub one out and move on with my day. I work very hard to not let my horniness take over my life and take over my mind all day.

Final Notes
Everyone says this, but its true, don't beat yourself up over a relapse. Every streak counts, and every streak is helping your brain recover even a little bit. Be honest with yourself though and the changes you need to make. There are usually multiple reasons, not just emotion reasons by lifestyle habits that make you more inclined to masturbating and watching porn. It's not going to be a simple change where your entire life stays the same except for the fact that now you quit porn. You are going to have to change your entire life to really move past porn.

Don't focus too much on the streak either if you are worried about an eventual relapse. I know a lot of people like to count the days day by day, but in my opinion the streak distracts us from what is actually important, and then losing that streak to a relapse is even more devastating. For a while I didn't want to restart nofap because I felt like I did so much already with my first streak, but when I stopped thinking about the time frame it felt like a big relief to just stop thinking about how long I've gone and how long I need to go.

More advice that people on this forum might not like to hear either, is maybe don't spend so much time on this forum. Don't let the fact that you are addicted to porn dominate your life. If you are someone who is so sensitive that you need people to talk to to settle your urges, than by all means stay in contact with a friend or someone from this forum. For the most part, though, I think spending too much time in the community might give you anxiety, especially when your success might not line up with other people's success that you read. In my first streak I was on this forum every day reading people's stories and comparing myself to everyone else, but every time I come on to the forums all I'm thinking about, again, is porn and the act of not looking at porn. Once you start changing your life, I think it is actually important to take out as many things that connect your mind to thinking about porn as possible, and that includes even a community of people AGAINST porn. This last advice I don't think applies to everyone, but for me I think doing this on my own and really pushing myself to make necessary changes in my life all distracted me from porn, and now I feel strong enough to want to give my experience to others to hopefully help some people.

I really hope this helps a lot of people. Sorry for writing something so long, but I've been thinking about my experience this time and how much better I feel and I've been thinking about what I should write on these forums for a couple of days now.