Deleted all my porn today, this guy won by logic

[Howie Roary]

Spitofvalefor was kinda kramer-y

if Kramer's pastimes included breaking pint glasses over your face and making up swear words

[Howie Roary]

kramerimout.jpg

damn, lasted a whole week -- starting over fresh, with no edging, p. sure I had blue balls this morning or the sensation at least, if not the real deal. "Got it out of my system" and trying again with a new approach

day 1, ugh

[Howie Roary]

I did spread the good word though, I feel this si a pretty important men's health thing for guys to be aware of

[Howie Roary]

nice

I realized earlier today while debating if I should or not, just how attached I am to this stuff. So much easier to just go with it and be like ah who cares it's normal everyone does it

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/commen...s_it_the_porn/

Well since so far everyone else has given emotional arguments such as it being destructive and your penis growing sentient and helping you out I'll throw out the boring science that will actually help you.

So the secret thing that apparently no one understands is that it's got nothing to do with fapping or porn being bad by themselves. You can't put them in a box and then point and say "that's bad, don't do that."

The problem that nofap helps with is addiction to dopamine. Dopamine is the chemical your body historically created to regulate your instinctual behaviour. Your brain is essentially doing the following:

Food? Good, that keeps me alive, here, have some dopamine so you'll enjoy food!

Sex? Great, that spreads my genes and ensures my survival in the species, have some dopamine!

I could give more examples but I'm sure you understand how dopamine was essential from an evolutionary point of view. Problem with evolution is that it's rather slow and the world evolves quicker than our bodies does. So fast forward to 2012 and here you are, sitting at your PC watching porn and masturbating - both of which triggers dopamine creation in your brain.

When it comes to dopamine creation your brain can't tell the difference between a real woman and a digital women, nor does it know the difference between masturbating and real sex. Add on top of that how easy it is to find porn and how common masturbation has become and you get a ton of dopamine shot into your system every day. Your brain gets used to this and feels good when it has dopamine, so naturally it will regulate your instinctual behaviour to generate more. Well it just so happens that in the current world your brain has been trained to get the easiest dopamine from porn and masturbation, so that's what you end up doing.

Therefore, stopping porn and stopping masturbation are both essential to recovery from your dopamine addiction. You can stop one and not the other and it'll still help, but they are so intrinsically linked that it doesn't make much sense, if you do one you will do the other, without fail.

The goal of nofap is two fold:

- Overcome the excessive dopamine addiction in general.

- Rewire your brain to want dopamine from real human contact and real (sexual) relationships instead of digital ones.

And here's the real kicker - this is not all limited to porn and masturbation. The 2nd goal of nofap is solved by not watching porn and not masturbating, the first one may as well be, but there are other things that trigger dopamine and instant gratification type of entertainment is one of them. Every time you browse reddit/play a game instead of doing your homework, writing that paper, going to the gym or learning that new language. That's you triggering dopamine along brain paths that aren't beneficial to your life. You're wiring your brain to prefer Reddit over the gym. To prefer playing WoW instead of talking to your friend in real life. To prefer x over y. Think about how you normally spend your day and consider if maybe in addition to no porn and no masturbation, maybe you should flip that y and x so that you prefer gym over WoW.

tl;dr; find a hobby, fill that void or you're bound to fail by falling into the same habits even if it's not porn. i.e.; long hours spent on the internet

[Rhyis.]

This line of thinking is the equivalent of saying everybody will become addicted to food and become fat because eating ups your dopamine levels. Do shit in moderation, huzzah, you won't become addicted.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

There are people who are overweight because of that exact reason. So let's not try to belittle the point, fatty. It's a good post that provides some clarity on the topic.

[Howie Roary]

yeah I need more active/creative hobbies

somehow marathoning The Shield or The Wire doesn't strike me as being much better although I doubt the dopamine thing is going on

I understood the main point about the dopamine release though, and that's been the big impetus behind my taking this on (and spreading the good word). Edging is such a stupid thing to do though, lol. I do not recommend. It's p. awful to do that to yourself and walk around agitated all week - but hey I didn't fap! Somehow the latter statement doesn't quite console enough and it led to me restarting my counter.

back to the hobby drawing board methinks (gonna need something active to replace cycling, come winter as well)

[Blarg]

What is the time it takes to get re-addicted to dopamine. If it will happen again in the same time it takes to get off the addiction it seems like a yo-yo battle of feast and fast. You can diet for a month and lose weight but if you just go back to eating like normal you are back to what you weighed before and have to diet all over again.

[Rhyis.]

There are people who are overweight because of that exact reason. So let's not try to belittle the point, fatty. It's a good post that provides some clarity on the topic.

Motherfucker, I'm the skinniest fucker alive. My body could stand to gain like 20 pounds.

[Howie Roary]

What is the time it takes to get re-addicted to dopamine. If it will happen again in the same time it takes to get off the addiction it seems like a yo-yo battle of feast and fast. You can diet for a month and lose weight but if you just go back to eating like normal you are back to what you weighed before and have to diet all over again.

I was debating easing myself off, my gf said maybe I was taking on too much by stopping everything completely, maybe it's not realistic etc

However I think that this will degrade the quality of my recovery period and restoring my brain patterns to the way they should be in regards to dopamine release. I need to modify precursor behaviors (as well as fill the time I would have spent doing it) so that I don't find myself in a tempting situation

[Howie Roary]

may or may not be helpful, but:

any other time I've gone 3-4 days since release (sex Friday morning) and then fapped, I've had practically hilariously large loads. I was surprised to see an only moderately larger but ultimately unremarkable and certainly smaller than the usual stored up 3 day+ load

I'm wondering if my body has begun to adjust to my modified practices and is now producing less (this is possibly completely scientifically inaccurate)

[Blarg]

The size of a load represents how much of a man someone is

[Howie Roary]

sometimes I am a lot of man

[Milkster]

I sometimes stumble across internet porn and watch it yet don't touch myself. It's been about a week now without one fap. Life is so hard now.

[Milkster]

Oh, I haven't had sex with anyone since Wednesday, this is getting pretty difficult.

[Milkster]

I just want to beat someone with my penis right now.

[Shiroikage]

wow, this thread lol

[Shiroikage]

gg fellows

[Conformity]

This is the most amazing thread ever, thx for that read Steve