Hi community, if someone considers himself healed after 3+ years (or even 1 year if that’s their case) of no PMO and never relapsed again, so if someone actually managed to overcome for good P*rn, can he tell me when did he realize he was actually healed? And how did he know that it wasn’t just a good period between withdrawals that come in circle until you completely reboot? Which leads me to another point: If I can’t know if I’m totally healed or just in a good period of my reboot, when can I reintroduce sex with a real partner without slowing down my recovery or even worsen my withdrawals? And why do withdrawals can also come 3months in your reboot instead of the first weeks, do they completely disappear with time? I’d like answers from people that actually passed through it cause sadly there aren’t many precise scientific info about P recovery (not like with other drugs at least) and it’s all so vague thank you
Consider yourself never fully healed from addiction it is a constant process that takes effort to maintain. For me I had DE and after 90 days I started dating and found a gf and DE is gone since then. I couldn't know if I was healed until I tried it and that made me nervous af. If I watch porn again every day it would surely reappear, just because I would become desensitized again. Comparison to alcohol is good once you take a sip you're back at it again.
Okay, but assuming I won’t go back to porn anymore cause symptoms are making me suffer like hell, do these withdrawals ever go away? I don’t mean decrease, I mean COMPLETELY disappear
That should happen very quickly IMO. If I don't watch porn for 2 weeks I already feel MUCH better than during an active period. I still get fantasies about porn etc. from time to time, but I don't define that as withdrawal. What kind of withdrawals do you mean? Something else can be the reason as well.
I’ll briefly explain my reboot story: I stopped p*rn in september, first weeks I experienced severe headaches and some nausea but I peeked in some sexual photos so I kept my mind focused on P stuff in the first days of October this escalated in a panic attack out of nowhere. Some weeks later (went cold turkey, not even a sexual thought) I felt better, just some derealization (like I was living in a movie and not in real life, guess it was brain fog) Recently, at almost 90 days I had two weeks of depression, anxiety, disrupted sleep, sense of void (sensation that nothing rly makes sense in life) just when I thought I wouldn’t have experienced other withdrawals. I NEVER experienced depression before so it should be withdrawals-induced. so my concern was if this cycle of periodical withdrawal ever ended, I know it gets better going on but my question is when am I gonna feel like I was before? I mean, the normal me that doesn’t live in his head constantly thinking about the worst scenarios, I hope I was clear
Normally reboots make you feel better not worse, so that's odd. I was extremely hopeful that my life will turn for the better. Higher confidence, interaction with people made me happy and a hunger to go out and be social. (I'm an introvert) However, I get very agitated when confronted with an opportunity to relapse. That inner unrest can cause me to not be able to sleep properly and get depressed. For example if I have an active profile at a dating site it would make me very agitated/excited, because there're opportunities for hook up etc. (I'm a sex and love addict as well unfortunately)
I don't think being unhappy of our life is alwayse related to porn or masturbation. Maybe there is something in your life that you don't like and that is what makes you sad. You should try to use the negative emotions that you feel right now to motivate yourself and take action to improve your life in every aspect (family, partner, job, income, friendships, health and so on). Plus, we used to watch porn to deal with negative emotions and avoid the difficult reality. It is quiet normal that once we stop PMing, we need to learn how to deal with these feelings without our easy escape (aka PM).
I agree, working on ourselves is necessary during reboot but I’m talking about chemical mess in our brain due to addiction withdrawals, that has nothing to do with simple boredom or unsatisfaction of our lives, it’s a brain chemical imbalance
For those who had ED/DE they mainly care about being sexual functioning. That is curable. For your question on chemical imbalance, I'm not sure if there is an answer. It seems difficult to measure and also judge if the imbalance is a withdrawal or something else. However what is clear that the nofap journey isn't linear, some days are tough with urges and the next day you're great again. For many doing nofap surfaces a lot of anger and supressed feelings. As porn was used to numb oneself after that it is required to find healthy ways to deal with that shit or it will fail. Rest assured going back to watching porn would make any depression way worse. Peaking/edging at pictures destroys almost all progress btw. Most of the research on porn abstinence can be found here : https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/research/
