Hi! New to NoFap and 27 Y/O Male. My PMO started about 5 years ago and I did do it quite regularly. I didn't watched P to keep myself entertained, I used it more as a tool to get the job done since my imagination isn't the best and I only watched P while MO. Never watched it while not MO. Last year (2023) I tried to get rid of this and downloaded an app called "BlockerHero", it's a free app but the free version has a low number of settings that can help you not to end up on erotic sites. So I pay a small fee for it every month and I'm happy with it and at the moment I haven't watched P for 113 days. Quiting P hasn't been that difficult for me, it's the MO that is more of an issue. 1st time I tried get rid of my regular MO I only lasted 10 days and at the moment I'm on my 2nd attempt and 4 days in. The reason why I joined and want to get rid of this is because I can't stand the urges from it and I'm having a hard time to feel excited or happy to do my hobbies as I did before beginning PMO, it's making me nuts. I want my brain to rewire/reboot so hopefully one day I can enjoy things I really enjoy instead of only getting those dopamin kicks from MO. My goal is at the moment to really try to avoid MO for 90 days as it seems to be a sweet spot for many, but the 86 days left won't be easy and it will take determination. This was a short summary of how it stared and my goal to get rid of this. Wish me luck.
Welcome, @Operation Change I believe you have come to the right place! I wish you best of luck in you reboot! Here's some things that work for me (that may or may not work for you): 1. Welcoming newcomers (as I do right now) 2. Checking in to these forums, every day 3. Exercising every day, except Sundays 4. Prayer to God, 2 times a day 5. Trying to contribute whereever I can, to whoever needs my assistance 6. Good sleep 7. In times of crisis, meditation (this I need to work much more on myself) Speaking from experience, although these points help, reboot is hard. But it's not impossible. Don't beat yourself up if you fail the first time. But learn from it, and get back up on the horse. This is life, so setbacks are inevitable, also in a reboot. Best wishes to you my friend ~Simorgh
Nice, a lot of guys myself included only look to quitting P as our goal, and perhaps we don't aim high enough. I like that you're going the extra mile and quitting MO too!
@tawwab1 Really? I thought the NoFap Community was all about quiting both P and MO since you won't be able to do a complete reboot without staying away from both, but I don't really know since I'm new to the community. Is P more of an issue than MO for you?
@Operation Change you'll find lots of people here whose goal is to quit masturbation, either for a reboot period or forever. But you'll also find those who just want to quit porn and continue masturbation, though I'd say that's rarer here. You'll also find a real mix of reasons: some of us quit masturbation because masturbation draws us back to porn, while others want to quit masturbation for its own sake.
The site is about stopping "PMO". What that means exactly is up to interpretation. Some guys just quit the P, some quit the P and the M, and some go all the way and quit all three letters (it's called semen retention or Karezza if you're with a partner). For some it's just a temporary challenge or a way to get "superpowers" and for others it's a permanent change. I got hooked on porn at age 11 and I was addicted for about 15 years of my life. Porn was a much more serious problem for me than masturbation because I had gotten attached to it emotionally. So I've focused all my effort on cutting that out -- permanently.
@Simorgh First and foremost, thank you for welcoming me, feels good to be able to join a community that has more or less the same problems as myself. I also appreciate all the suggestions that works for you and that you shared them with me! As I mentioned in my introduction post, I have already failed once but I'll really try to make my second attempt more successful to be able to reach my goal. At the moment it's my 5th day without MO and even though the hurges and the craving for it is pretty strong I'm still very determined to say "no" to myself. I'm prepared for some hell week/weeks before my brain will start to reboot itself. I wishes the best of luck to you too, my friend
@kropo82 I see, thank you for the explanation! Well I can't promise that I'll be able to quit MO forever, but I'm very determined to do it as we speak because I want and need a brain reboot. If I want to begin MO in the future I want to be able to decide myself when I wanna do it and not let my brain decide when I shall do it because it has the power to send out strong urges signals just because it wants that dopamine kick. It's hard to say what the future holds but there are only to options from me. Either I'll be able to control it and decide when I want to do or if that doesn't work, I'll just have to stop MO forever because I'm afraid I'll end up like it is right now once again
@tawwab1 Oh jesus! You really started watch porn at 11? That's very early if you ask me. I started watch P when I was 22 years old. What got you in to watching P at that young age? Did it begin because you were curious? Being P addicted during 15 years has to been tough. You could watch P without the need to M? You could look at it just as entertainment?
I used to love computer games, and had a friend who would show me what sites to go to to pirate all the new games. Some of those sites had porn ads, and first I would just ignore them, but the fascination was just building up in the background, so eventually when my parents would leave me alone at home, I would click on them and then start masturbating to them. No, like I said before, I was emotionally attached to P. And it always led to MO. But I have found that edging and MO is not as addictive and destructive as long as I just stay away from P. P is what starts the addiction cycle for me.
@tawwab1 I see, many years ago I sometimes as well went to some pirated sites to look for some free games, but I can't remember while being on a pirate site see any P ads to be honest. Maybe you used different once than me. I have to say that you really had some guts to be able to open up those ads since it could have given you a computer virus or something similar. But at 11 years old, maybe you not thought about that? Ahh, every time you watched P it leed you to MO, I get it. Could you do it a couple of times per day as well than? Myself I haven't PMO or MO more than 2 times per day, but doing it 2 times a day was quite rare since I was satisfied with once a day most of the time.
@Free Kicker Nice, to have someone that thought like me! Just being curious, what is your goal with NoFap?
I'm older than you and porn sites were way different back then. There were only "banner ads" which were plain images or slideshows that took you to basically a gallery of images asking for a subscription. This was even before videos! I want to go to the next level this year and kick MO too. It's not really even a habit for me, but just something I end up doing when I'm away from the wife. But it's definitely a sin in my religion and unhealthy too.
@tawwab1 Yeah, I'm 27 so I'm younger and haven't experienced how it was when you were young, true. I like your determination to quit MO as well. Why I want to quit MO is mostly for the reboot from PMO but also because P has made my way of looking at women kinda bad, I'm not sexualizing them or begin to think that every women I see as cute I wanna jump in bed with, but unfortunately when looking at women my eyes can sometimes focus on other parts on a women, if you catch my drift? I wanna be free from those thing, at least it would make my life a bit better and easier than it is today. I'm not having and never had any GF or Wife so I haven't had that problem, but I can understand that being a couple or married and one of them are P addicted that it can be a challenge. I'm not a praying man either, so on my end I don't see myself that my PMO has been a sin, but I can understand that you as a religious man can feel that you have done something against your religion. We are only humans and I'm sure your god can forgive you one day for your sins.
Well, in any case your thinking is good bro, so keep it up and I hope you stick around here. I find this forum is a lot more useful than Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media with real people who are mostly shitposting random thoughts and politics. NoFap keeps my mind focused on the goal, and even though there are people of many faiths and no faith we're all here to achieve the same goal of stopping PMO.
@tawwab1 I appreciate your kind words about I have good thoughts and I will stick around here as long as I need to, bro. But my goal is still to do the reboot and see things from a better perspective. One day I'm hopefully will have fulfilled my goal and hopefully maybe don't have to be as active here as I am right now. The future will only be able to tell. I deleted both my Facebook and Instagram account over half a year ago. Facebook has become shit and Instagram has to many triggers that can lead back to PMO or just MO. The filtering on Instagram is completely shit, you can post stuff that's very close to count as P, in my opinion. To be able to succeed my goal with NoFap I need to get away from all triggers but unfortunately the internet is full of them. This is my second attempt to fulfill my goal and to get in a relapse is not an option. I need to change myself to the better, that's my new year resolution.
