Age 17 – From D’s & F’s to honor role, no more anxiety & depression

I am super excited today because as you can see I MADE IT TO THE BIG DAY 90! I hope you read all I am about to write as I believe it can help and encourage a lot of people here and some of my experiences are different than the norm. So sit back, relax, and read my wall of text!

A little back story; I began fapping to porn like most people when I was 12. In a few years it began to affect me in ways I never imagined. I became a bad student, always spending time fapping, and had a lot of anxiety and a period of depression last year (both of which are mostly gone) was the breaking point. As I was researching depression threads on reddit I found NoFap. Someone had linked it in their recovery post and said how great it was and how it made them improve. I then watched the your brain on porn video series and knew I had to make a change.

Throughout the next year I was trying and failing at NoFap. At first I would reset if I looked at porn at all. I soon realized this was not for me as I would look at porn and then think “well I relapsed anyway might as well go all the way.” From this moment on I decided to get a separate badge on /r/PornFree. I am currently only on day 1 of that after a nasty  relapse at day 53, but I manged to hold it together here. Well here I am at the age of 17 and I haven’t fapped for 90 days. Does it work? HELL YEA and I’m going to tell you why.

Personal Improvements One of the biggest changes was my grades. I had always been a decently smart kid, always playing with LEGOs or watching Mythbusters, and I got decent grades. However when I got to high school my grades plummeted to Ds and Fs. This was also the height of my PMO days (about 1-3 times a day). However the past year and especially the past 90 days have been a complete turn around. This year I have gotten mostly A’s and B’s and made my first Honor Roll! I am a better student than ever and am super happy to be going to college next year for IT/Engineering, haven’t chosen yet.

Another HUGE step was my physical appearance. About a year ago just before starting NoFap I decided to cut out fast-food and soda completely. I have been clean of those for over a year now and it has really benefited me. The combination of the diet change and running 2 miles every day has caused me to lose a good amount of weight, drop 2 pant sizes and a whole shirt size, and look better than ever. I also urge any guy (sorry ladies can’t help you here) to go check out /r/Malefashionadvice and /r/malehairadvice as they helped me tremendously.

Hobbies and activities The other big improvement from NoFap is my hobbies and stuff I do to have fun. I used to not really do anything but since starting NoFap I have gotten hooked on two of my favorite activities comic books and magic the gathering. I know these may not seem like the “coolest” hobbies but they are what I like to do, have helped me meet tons of friends, and I even started a Youtube channel and podcast devoted to the two. This is something I never would have done or had time for while PMO was apart of my life. Video games are a big thing people shun on here and I don’t believe in that. My video game life has changed however since starting NoFap. I used to just mindlessly play Call of Duty and other first person multiplayer shooters and not realy enjoy them. Now I find myself playing a lot of RPGs and single-player games that I really enjoy and I always catch myself stopping and thinking “wow what a beautiful game” (looking at you AC4) something I never did or appreciated before.

Porn and what is next So now my focus is Porn. As I said I blew my 53 days PornFree streak yesterday but thankfully held it together here. Porn and fapping really go hand in hand. My goal is to stay with NoFap and PornFree for life as I really have no interest in the disgusting and useless hobby of PMO. Also I plan to keep working on my social skills and get in better shape. One other thing I did that helped was create a life jar, where I put a goal for each day on a piece of paper. I might do a separate post on this but some are personal that I don’t want to share. This really helped me along. Girl wise I am still single, not really actively looking for a significant other as I am very busy and graduating in a month anyway. I do however have not lower but different standards with women and look at them less as sex objects more as normal people whom I want to be friends with.

So that is it thanks for reading everyone! I hope it helped at least some of you and please feel free to message me if you ever need support, I am always happy to help. Also I will stay active here because I want to help out as best I can. Have a great day everyone YOU ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL!

EDIT: Added the last few lines about girls and being single, totally slipped my mind

EDIT 2: Thanks to http://www.reddit.com/user/-9- for giving me gold!

LINK – I cannot believe I made it this far! 90 day report: success, porn, and more!

by Sheehan7


 

UPDATE – Last year I graduated high school with a 1.8 GPA. That summer I started NoFap and I just finished my first year of college with a 3.28 GPA

I’m so excited right now. I bummed it through high school and of course was PMOing about 1-3 times a day. I graduated with a 1.8 GPA. Right around when I graduated I found you guys and it took me a while to get my footing but I have had some decent streaks and I think by now I have a handle on the whole NoFap thing.

Anyway this year with the help of NoFap I really smartened up. Cut out gaming mostly and started reading books and also worked way harder in school. Well after my first year and 8 classes I have a 3.28 GPA! It could have been better but I got a C+ last semester but it was the transition from HS to college so not too bad.

I’m just so happy to finally take school seriously and I have NoFap to thank for some of that. My goal for next semester is a 3.30+ so I can guarantee a spot in the school I want to transfer to.


 

UPDATE – 90 days! Life is better and fresh. Haven’t felt this good in years, NoFap 10/10

I’m 18, male, and a sophomore in college. I used to PMO 1-4 times a day every day since I was about 12 like many of you here. I found NoFap by accident 2 years ago when I was at a low point in my life, very depressed and sad, and decided I would give it a shot.

I have gotten to 90 days before in those 2 years but I was still watching porn so that didn’t count. Now I’m back fully clean and it’s great.

The hard road I’m not going to lie this NoFap thing was TOUGH and still is. Paired with my pretty stressful life (no friends, back injury, finances, transferring college, etc.) it was really hard many times but I kept up. The biggest mindset change I had came from just saying to myself “you just have to crawl through the shit to get to the other side” and watching that Shawshank Redemption tunnel scene over and over again in my head.

What to expect Alright so you want to try out this NoFap thing? Well here’s basically what happened to me in a time line:

  • First 12 days I felt like a god damn god
  • Days 16-25 pretty decent flatline, very tired, sad, etc. but urges were huge.
  • Days 26-60 were mostly alright but I felt like something wasn’t quite right, something was changing in the back of my head.
  • Days 61-76 HOLY SHIT I was experiencing serious withdrawal and flatline symptoms including but not limited to: depression, anxiety, crippling loneliness, hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, zero urge, insomnia. However it didn’t feel like something actually wrong with me it felt like my brain was changing.
  • Days 80+ pretty smooth sailing, really feel like I’m at a good point now.

What changed in my life Well A LOT has happened in these last 3 months. I made deans list for the first time ever, I got a new retail job, then got another new office job that I start in a week, started taking working out even more seriously (previously just ran a lot hence the back injury), became a social butterfly (the reason I left my new retail job is because I worked alone 90% of the time and couldn’t take it), gaming less (this wasn’t even a choice it just happened, I still like gaming just not as much), reinventing my social media (I unfriended and unfollowed a ton of negative people), and just improved confidence and everything!

My findings with the /r/NoFap community and some misconceptions So there are a few things I have noticed over the course of these 3 months and I want to shed some light on them. Firstly that whole “non-technology” mindset needs to stop. I saw multiple posts about people smashing their laptops…what the hell? Technology is a HUGE part of our lives and it’s doing great things for us. I’m an IT major so I’m bias but as long as you use it responsibly it can be a great tool. Replace reddit with fitness sites or musical lessons and technology becomes a great use of time.

K9 and web blockers are shit and you know why? One of, if not the best benefit of NoFap, is self control. I have learned to say NO to things including porn. K9 does that for you and when you are faced with true temptation you wont have the track record built up to say no and you will fail.

Lastly this really has to be done in correlation with no porn. Like I said I tried NoFap but watched porn and didn’t see any benefits. Cut them both out if you relapse on one you reset your badge it’s that simple.

Final thoughts NoFap is great but like many say it’s not a magic pill. You must work hard along side it in aspects of health, fitness, dress, studies, mindset, and life in general to see success. NoFap just gives you that little push you need.

As for me well I’m going to keep on going. I see no reason to go back to old ways and don’t plan on it. Good luck to anyone reading this and you CAN do it.

TL;DR; NoFap pushes you to change your life, use it, embrace it, push through it and you will be happy.

Also one last thing, here is my favorite motivational video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjjzTB0YIJk&index=18&list=FLcSGCOI4Ap_4rIzCtHVuGmw

Honorable Mention: HUGE shout out to /u/propheticjoker for being nice enough to reach out and shoot me his number in a time of need a few weeks ago. We have since become great friends and he really helped me out a lot in the last few legs of the journey. Much love man

by Sheehan7


 

UPDATE – By far the best benefit of NoFap: being way more social

I’m at a whopping 316 days of NoFap (if I can do it you can too) and god damn its been awesome but the BEST benefit I have experienced is being social! I wasn’t really an introvert before this but now I consider myself an extreme extrovert. I love social interactions. I just started a new job 2 weeks ago and I already feel like I have been there for a year, everyone seems to enjoy my company (I hope at least). I’m usually the one to greet the workers at stores and shops I go to before they get a chance to, I smile at random people, I even asked how some police officers night was going when I was walking to my car.

Before NoFap I would NEVER strike up a random conversation and I’m sure my few social interactions were cringe worthy. I truly think this is one of the best and most direct benefits NoFap has brought to me. Could be increased confidence or whatever but it’s awesome

Bonus related benefit: eye contact is almost second nature now. I started by thinking in my head “hey remember to look them in the eyes” and it resulted in me focusing really hard to do that and I would miss some of what they were saying but now it’s almost automatic, still needs a bit of work.


UPDATE

Probably the lamest title ever but it’s my honest thoughts. I kind of forgot about this but I can’t believe I made it over a year without PMO! I guess I will list some of my benefits and then open the discussion to answer any questions people have!

I’m 19 btw

Notes:

  • More confident
  • More motivation
  • I’m a huge extrovert now (before I was more introverted)
  • Lots of changes in hobbies such as a complete falling out with video games which was replaced with more rewarding hobbies and interests such as reading, fashion, writing, and fitness
  • Zero urges after day like 120
  • Porn is the bigger problem I still have pretty big urges for porn

Overall I do notice more interest from the opposite sex however I don’t necessarily think that is NoFap’s doing. I think it’s a tiny bit the more confidence but mostly the fact that I notice them noticing. Before I had no interest so didn’t realize girls’ signals or their attention.

I’m still single but I’m kind of busy and don’t go out of my way to play the field much. However I have hung out and made friends with more girls and I’m a lot more myself around them now where as prior I was a mess

I have seen a lot of friends whom I haven’t talked to in a year or two who said I was like a new person and were pretty impressed. Again this is more because of being more active and taking care in what I wear and do but that came with NoFap so in turn I guess you could say people noticed a difference because of NoFap

Anyway I know it’s kind of short and lame but I don’t want to ramble about. However if there is anything you want to know or are struggling with ask away!

LINK – I actually made it a year? Cool!