Success Update: Understanding the Two Most Important Benefits

What are the most important benefits of beating your pmo addiction?

At 4.5 months of no porn or masturbation after years of addiction, I see the "benefits" differently than I saw them at Day 0. Yes, I have enjoyed all the usual life enhancers that others have noted, such as no brain fog, amazing focus, clear mind, terrific learning power, greater confidence, greatly improved physical workouts, awareness of females looking at me more and the resulting feeling of greater masculinity. There are others, I think, but those are enough to mention right now.

All these things are great and really enhance my day. But they are really secondary to what I believe are the two biggest benefits to beating your porn and masturbation addictions, namely, 1) a better understanding of urges, and 2) a new freedom of choice. I will explain what I mean.

1) A better understanding of urges
While one is beginning at this, urges are usually at the center of thinking. A large percentage of posts on this site have common themes, urges are to be avoided, urges are to be feared, urges are to be ignored, urges are a sign of weakness, you have to be strong and fight them, etc. None of this is true, in my opinion.

The male urge to be horny is normal. The dopamine addiction from online porn is not normal, nor is the accompanying uncontrollable compulsion to fap. It is well documented in psychology research that a compulsion is a coping mechanism for anxiety. Often that anxiety is a result of things you either don't like about yourself and/or can't control.

I see so many posts from guys who feel their urges are abnormal or that they are weak because they can't stop themselves when triggered. Urges are not abnormal and the compulsive, ritualistic fapping that you hate and yet do isn't because you're weak, it's because of the dopamine addiction and involuntary actions of the "reptile" part of your brain. This bypasses the decision-making centers of your brain and takes the choice away from you. You are not weak. You are not weak. You are not weak. Stop hating yourself for being weak.

Even though you think you're doing it out of weakness, you're really doing it out of impulse to feed the dopamine addiction, habit and attempting to cope with anxiety (including anxiety caused by fapping, ironically). This is one reason that procrastination is frequently tied up with it.

You have no choice. You cannot control a compulsive action once it takes hold. How many times have you started typing a porn URL and started reaching in your pants while your conscience is screaming "NO" in your head? But there's this other voice saying, "I'm going to do this no matter what." Right?

Bottom line, until you understand that this is a compulsion you won't deal with the things leading to the compulsion. Until you learn to fight an involuntary action by changing your ability to act involuntarily by changing things in your lifestyle and environment, you have no choice. You are fighting a dopamine machine that has no morals and has a direct line of control to your involuntary movements. You can't beat that with reason because the reasoning, moral, willpower part of your brain is being bypassed. You have to fight a machine with prevention, not with the voice of reason or willpower. Once I understood this, I finally made it to my first month, then the second and so on. No, it wasn't easy. It was torture but I did it and if I can do it after decades of addiction, you can do it.

2) A new freedom of choice
Because of all the things above, the one thing all pmo addicts do not have is a choice to not look at porn and masturbate. Other people who have never suffered from pmo addiction look at this website and scoff. Maybe your friends at school or work laugh at the idea of not being able to stop. They know nothing. Getting through the first 60 days is incredibly difficult and yet, incredibly worth it.

Once you get to 90 Days and beyond, you will realize that for the first time since you started the addiction, you will have the freedom to choose not to fap. You will still have triggers but you'll be able to ignore many of them. You will still have urges but you will be used to them and might even start to enjoy them because they make you feel confident and more (not less) in control.

For the first time in my adult life, I actually feel like I have a choice whether or not to fap. I choose not to. Some guys have made it to even 6 months or a year and decided to have a go, only to completely relapse and lose their choice again. Sometimes it takes them months to get another good streak started. That's warning enough for me. In my case, I choose no pm as a life decision. Do I miss M? Eh, sometimes, maybe. But I don't miss the old me at all. I don't miss the brain fog, the anxieties, the procrastination, and above all, I don't miss the porn. NONE of those are worth being enslaved again for a few minutes of wanking. No thanks. I choose to exercise my freedom and I choose no pm.

Conclusion
By 90 days, I realized that I didn't endure all that torture so that the urges would go away. They don't go away because your male hormones don't go away. I endured it in order to get used to the urges and to learn how to acknowledge them and not fear them. I endured it in order to learn how to use the pent up energy for getting things done, working out, confidence, being more masculine, living life. Seen in this way, the urges are good things, not bad. They're not to be feared but embraced. Yes, sometimes they're really strong but after 4.5 months, the thought of losing all this progress in my life is too awful to give in. That helps and now I actually have the freedom to say no. I wish that for you, too.

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UPDATE MAY 2019

Okay, if anybody stumbles on this thread I wanted to give an update. I want you to know that all the benefits became just a normal part of my life. On the day I write this, I am 1.5 years into my nofap streak. I haven't counted days in a long time because the new me isn't really keeping track of the old me anymore. I just want guys to know that it can be done if you set your mind to it and don't give up when you fail. I relapsed more times than most of you but there came a day when I said "No more!"That was the first day of mynew life. You can do this!

 

Sometimes they are addicts who like their addiction and don't have a religious or moral problem with it and scoff at us because they think we should just enjoy it.. Sometimes they are addicts in denial. Sometimes they are guys who never fell into the dopamine addiction trap of online porn. Others learned to channel their sexual energy into workouts, sports, etc. and didn't fap that extra energy away.

But regarding the guys who are here, we often have a lot of similarities to each other in terms of certain traits, such as introversion, perfectionism, anxiety, shyness, feelings of inferiority, just to name a few. Many are here to stop for religious reasons and may think that the reason they can't stop is because of a lack of belief or faith because they don't understand the compulsive aspect. I'd like to assure those guys that your faith is strong or you wouldn't be here looking for help. Your willpower is strong or you wouldn't keep trying.

 

It is a big help to me because I wish to honor my wife by saving my whole self for her and only her.

 

That would simply be another anxiety about oneself, wouldn't you say?

 

Fair enough.

 

You're welcome Stephan. I hope this really helps you get past that important first week. You can do it!

 

Thank you for your kind words. I appreciate it. Since you don't know me, you would not be aware that it's actually the other way around. I've been in a successful career for a long time where I have daily opportunities to inspire and encourage. My professional life has only been affected by my former addiction in small (but important) ways. Now I'm using my broad career experience plus my real-life experience with beating pmo to help guys here who need to hear honesty, data-driven accuracy and tough love. PMO is the symptom of someone's deeper problems, not the problem itself. Think about that and keep at it!! You can do it! Congratulations on 12 days. And God bless you, too.