The NoPorn / NoFap Thread - For Those Who're Serious

[Lawrence87]

I believe that men can definitely train resistance to urges. You can start as small as you like. Got an urge for another cup of coffee? Don't get one. Want to lay around in bed for an extra hour doom scrolling? Get up and go for a walk.

Being able to say no when our flesh urges us to do something is a muscle we can train. And we pretty much have an opportunity to train in this constantly, by not doing, or saying the thing you want. By not looking at those women as you walk past etc.

You can become adept at self denial and you can train yourself to resist stronger and stronger urges.

 

[staddlelateen]

The advice here is not very helpful. If you have been watching porn since a young age and are addicted, you likely have some chemical and physical dependency on it that cannot be cured simply by praying. Porn deforms the brain in a similar manner as heroin and other drugs, which leads to poor frontal lobe function, leading to poor impulse control and irrational decision making. It's functionally the same as the brains of people with ADHD and psychopathy. If you are truly interested in stopping, you will likely need to treat your addiction with medication therapy, including stimulants that are used to treat ADHD. Additionally, an on an anecdotal note, I have found that my urges are triggered just before and after I have a migraine, so if you do suffer from migraines than consider the possibility that the irregular brain waves that occur during and after a migraine may cause or exacerbate your urges.

 

[Lawrence87]

The advice here is not very helpful. If you have been watching porn since a young age and are addicted, you likely have some chemical and physical dependency on it that cannot be cured simply by praying. Porn deforms the brain in a similar manner as heroin and other drugs, which leads to poor frontal lobe function, leading to poor impulse control and irrational decision making. It's functionally the same as the brains of people with ADHD and psychopathy. If you are truly interested in stopping, you will likely need to treat your addiction with medication therapy, including stimulants that are used to treat ADHD. Additionally, an on an anecdotal note, I have found that my urges are triggered just before and after I have a migraine, so if you do suffer from migraines than consider the possibility that the irregular brain waves that occur during and after a migraine may cause or exacerbate your urges.

God can heal brain tumours. Of course He can heal any damage caused by pornography only a non believer would say otherwise. Of course He won't heal you if you don't believe He can

 

[Lawrence87]

To expound on that a little. Through the grace of God, Holy Confession, and by the prayers of my priest and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ I have been free from porn for 9 months. May the grace of God continue to protect me.

I was exposed to porn pretty young and at its worst point my addiction to it was a daily thing at minimum.

The main things that helped were prayer (I am sure mostly not my own), confession, and a desire to serve God. There is absolutely no need for any other kind of intervention, but if you don't believe you can do it you never will. Externalizing the solution is externalizing the problem.

Saying your brain is damaged and therefore needs medication is not ever going to work. You'll fail you will blame the ineffective meds and your broken brain and you will never escape the problem.

Prayer does work, but it needs faith. Otherwise its like a bird with only one wing. Saying your brain is broken and you need meds is weak, and faithless

 

[staddlelateen]

Thank you for demonstrating what types of response is so unhelpful. Your judgmental and anecdotal experience based on your feels isn’t going to help anyone.

My response is based on brain studies of heavy-use porn addicts that started using porn from pre-puberty, and brain scans of these individuals clearly show deformed frontal lobal activity similar to those who are addicted to hard drugs or those who were sexually abused at a young age.

Of course, God’s grace is both sufficient and necessary for salvation and of course God has the power to cure any illness, but He also provided us with free will and an intellect, which He expects us to use in order to solve our problems. In any case, this is my last post on this matter. I only dropped in because of Trump's win, and I wanted to briefly help individuals who fit this description, have tired other methods, and are still suffering. That's all. Feel free to resume your pointless bloviating.

 

[Lawrence87]

Thank you for demonstrating what types of response is so unhelpful. Your judgmental and anecdotal experience based on your feels isn’t going to help anyone.

My response is based on brain studies of heavy-use porn addicts that started using porn from pre-puberty, and brain scans of these individuals clearly show deformed frontal lobal activity similar to those who are addicted to hard drugs or those who were sexually abused at a young age.

Of course, God’s grace is both sufficient and necessary for salvation and of course God has the power to cure any illness, but He also provided us with free will and an intellect, which He expects us to use in order to solve our problems. In any case, this is my last post on this matter. I only dropped in because of Trump's win, and I wanted to briefly help individuals who fit this description, have tired other methods, and are still suffering. That's all. Feel free to resume your pointless bloviating.

Its not pointless and unhelpful. The church has helped people out of their sinful passions with the exact same methods for 2000 years. Telling people to pray, work on their faith and go to confession regularly will help them battle pornography and masturbation. I can attest to this. The history of the church attests to this.

All this talk of deforming your brain is just removing your own agency. It might be true that it damages your brain, but you can still stop jerking off if you really want to. It might take a while of falling and getting back up etc before you're completely free but its perfectly possible.

Telling yourself you have a broken brain that makes it nigh impossible to stop jerking off is exactly the defeatist attitude that will keep you on the ground.

Its this attitude of externalizing everything that keeps us weak. "Its not me, porn has damaged my brain and I'm the helpless victim of it" you are only shooting yourself in the foot with such an attitude.

 

[analyst_green]

To expound on that a little. Through the grace of God, Holy Confession, and by the prayers of my priest and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ I have been free from porn for 9 months. May the grace of God continue to protect me.

I was exposed to porn pretty young and at its worst point my addiction to it was a daily thing at minimum.

The main things that helped were prayer (I am sure mostly not my own), confession, and a desire to serve God. There is absolutely no need for any other kind of intervention, but if you don't believe you can do it you never will. Externalizing the solution is externalizing the problem.

Saying your brain is damaged and therefore needs medication is not ever going to work. You'll fail you will blame the ineffective meds and your broken brain and you will never escape the problem.

Prayer does work, but it needs faith. Otherwise its like a bird with only one wing. Saying your brain is broken and you need meds is weak, and faithless

How did you get to that level of faith? I try to love God and serve Him, but my faith feels cold and empty most of the time. His commandments can seem onerous and cruel even. I strive to follow them only because I know Christ is the truth, not out of love. All my efforts against porn seem pointless without a true love of God, and my patience is wearing thin.

It seems like love and faith is a gift only He can grant us. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't feel like I can increase my faith of my own power.

 

[Lawrence87]

How did you get to that level of faith? I try to love God and serve Him, but my faith feels cold and empty most of the time. His commandments can seem onerous and cruel even. I strive to follow them only because I know Christ is the truth, not out of love. All my efforts against porn seem pointless without a true love of God, and my patience is wearing thin.

It seems like love and faith is a gift only He can grant us. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't feel like I can increase my faith of my own power.

I don't think I have particularly strong faith or love for God, but he rewards my meagre efforts abundantly. I believe I have a good priest and his prayers have helped me immensely

First thing I think is that you need to believe that the version of you who doesn't watch porn is a possibility. A person who thinks they can't do it, won't do it.

Repeated confession is essential. My ability to abstain for progressively longer periods was a direct result of the shame I had about repeatedly confessing it.

I don't want to give too many personal details but I will say, ask if there is some capacity for you to serve at your church. Whether it is tidying up or making sure the lamps have enough oil or something. Having duty in the church will help immensely. The deeper you go into church life the more incompatible certain behaviours seem.

As for loving God. I cannot give advice because I am shamefully hard hearted myself. Just keep on the path brother.

 

[Knight.of.Logos]

Prayer does really help. I've struggled with lust for most of my life, since I was 13 or so.

I know when my prayer game weakens, I begin to get much stronger temptations and am more likely to fall because those temptations. On days when my prayer game is strong, I get less temptations, and they are also easier to resist. Of course, it's no guarantee of avoiding relapse, but for sure it helps.

Prayer helps with other temptations too. I've cut down drinking a lot in the last year, and when I am praying less I get more temptations to buy alcohol, and am more likely to cave into those temptations.

 

[cormy_cormorant]

I don't know if it's going to help but I used to have another very unpleasant addiction: eating in bed just before falling asleep. I craved that all too familiar feeling of comfort while preparing to go to sleep, which should always be accompanied by eating and watching something on youtube. in many ways that was a return to the safety of childhood, played out by my subconscious seeking shelter and material comfort. Yes, eating while watching something was a delightful luxury and I looked to emulate the experience whenever possible. Then I started to make some changes, largely replacing anything related to calorie consumption. I don't even remember whether it was by chance or a calculated effort, but I eventually found out that those darn cravings could be essentially sated by less harmful habits. that's when I started doing duolingo and sololearn before retiring for the day. maybe not the best outcome, but I consider this change of habit a real victory and I am grateful every day for having made this choice.

maybe a possible solution to the dreaded porn-fapping pair could also be something along those lines, a less destructive addiction......

 

[Unending Powerhouse Match]

I don't know if it's going to help but I used to have another very unpleasant addiction: eating in bed just before falling asleep. I craved that all too familiar feeling of comfort while preparing to go to sleep, which should always be accompanied by eating and watching something on youtube. in many ways that was a return to the safety of childhood, played out by my subconscious seeking shelter and material comfort. Yes, eating while watching something was a delightful luxury and I looked to emulate the experience whenever possible. Then I started to make some changes, largely replacing anything related to calorie consumption. I don't even remember whether it was by chance or a calculated effort, but I eventually found out that those darn cravings could be essentially sated by less harmful habits. that's when I started doing duolingo and sololearn before retiring for the day. maybe not the best outcome, but I consider this change of habit a real victory and I am grateful every day for having made this choice.

maybe a possible solution to the dreaded porn-fapping pair could also be something along those lines, a less destructive addiction......

Nothing short of mind altering substances is anywhere near as stimulating as pornography. But I do think something like a strategy videogame that puts your brain to work should be able to take your mind off it pretty easily.

 

[Lawrence87]

Nothing short of mind altering substances is anywhere near as stimulating as pornography. But I do think something like a strategy videogame that puts your brain to work should be able to take your mind off it pretty easily.

The longer periods of time that you abstain from pornography the more you regain your ability to get a buzz from small things.

Its actually quite useful to think of it in those terms. Porn doesn't add anything to your life it actually just dulls your ability to get pleasure from normal things.

Porn turns you into a zombie who can't truly enjoy life except when he's watching other men have sex

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

How did you get to that level of faith? I try to love God and serve Him, but my faith feels cold and empty most of the time. His commandments can seem onerous and cruel even. I strive to follow them only because I know Christ is the truth, not out of love. All my efforts against porn seem pointless without a true love of God, and my patience is wearing thin.

It seems like love and faith is a gift only He can grant us. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't feel like I can increase my faith of my own power.

Spend more time in the Word. It addresses everything that you just raised. You need deliverance and God's Grace is ready to deliver.

Jesus Christ is able to deliver us from all addiction and His blood cleanses us from all our sin.

 

[Seng Hock]

After considering the input from others, working on my anger and attempting to find out what is causing it, I believe I have found the answer.

Back in May, when I relapsed on Pascha, I sincerely regretted my actions and repented heavily. With God's grace, I was able to do NoPorn/NoFap for 98 days. This was a big deal for me because since I started jerking off back in junior high school until now, the longest I've been clean is 18 days (it didn't even break the three-week mark). For years, 90% of the time I relapsed in the first week, 9% relapsed after one week, and 1% after two weeks.

My ability to do 98 days of NoFap (and without nocturnal emissions at all!) came from God. During this time, I humbled myself, tried living a pious life, and routinely went to church. When I became tempted, I said my prayers instead of indulging in it. During this time, even porn and pictures of beautiful women rarely tempted me. Even when taking eurycoma longifolia and tribulus terrestris, instead of becoming horny, I became stronger, had more stamina, and was more socially active. Energy transmutation was real at that time.

But on the 98th day, hubris came to me, and I thought that I was strong now. I began testing my boundaries by purposefully watching porn and images of beautiful women, and we all know the results.

Now the question is, why haven't I been able to replicate my past success? Why do I keep failing to last more than a week by becoming unbearably angry?

Over the last 2-3 months, I've been holding a grudge against our Lord Jesus Christ and hating Him. I disagreed with many of His teachings and thought they were making me weak. I believed I could become stronger by ignoring parts of the teachings that didn't make sense because I saw many unchristian and non-Christian people succeeding in life.

This Friday, on the day of St. Demetrius of Thessalonica, there was a divine liturgy at my church. So, I went there even though I had to go through traffic jams during working hours. In the church, I took the liturgy seriously since the church was empty, and I could concentrate fully. After the divine liturgy, I felt precisely zero anger, hate, and other bad emotions. Until this evening, I feel at peace with zero anger.

I do not think this is a coincidence.

Another thing I found out is that I can only be healed by going to an Orthodox church.

During these last few months, I went several times to a Catholic church for the weekly mass and first Friday mass. But it did nothing for me. I thought that by praying in more places, I could get closer to God. No offense to the Catholic members here, but Catholicism does nothing for me. From now on, I will not go to a Catholic church to pray out of my own free will, except when invited by others, such as for weddings.

If there is a liturgy outside of Sunday divine liturgy in my Orthodox parish, I will make the attempt to attend it. I wish to repent for holding a grudge against the Lord.

 

[Unending Powerhouse Match]

I disagreed with many of His teachings and thought they were making me weak.

Which teachings did you have this opinion of?

 

[TruckDriver9]

 

[Seng Hock]

The advice here is not very helpful. If you have been watching porn since a young age and are addicted, you likely have some chemical and physical dependency on it that cannot be cured simply by praying. Porn deforms the brain in a similar manner as heroin and other drugs, which leads to poor frontal lobe function, leading to poor impulse control and irrational decision making. It's functionally the same as the brains of people with ADHD and psychopathy. If you are truly interested in stopping, you will likely need to treat your addiction with medication therapy, including stimulants that are used to treat ADHD. Additionally, an on an anecdotal note, I have found that my urges are triggered just before and after I have a migraine, so if you do suffer from migraines than consider the possibility that the irregular brain waves that occur during and after a migraine may cause or exacerbate your urges.

It is true that watching porn and being addicted to it can possibly damage the brain. Reading NoFap resources and Your Brain On Porn confirms this. My own personal experience also confirms this. After years of too much porn/fapping, watching porn and looking at pictures of women is not about fap materials anymore. Eventually, I used it to get high with feelings like ASMR, calm, peace, quiet, and meditation.

But for me, the solution is turning myself to God, humbling myself, and asking Him to teach me His commandments. How else could a person like me go over 90 days of NoFap? During this time, even porn videos and images of women barely tempted me. I remember stumbling upon a new feature called RTX Super Resolution, which uses AI and video card processing to improve video quality on the fly. I tried this tech to watch some auto-upscaled porn videos, but instead of indulging in it, I closed the video not long after. The same happened with pictures of women; when I browsed some pics on Instagram, I closed it after not too long.

I did not take any medications or other similar things, but prayer and faith worked for me.

Which teachings did you have this opinion of?

I take issue with Christ's teachings on turning the other cheek, loving our enemies, and praying for them. Additionally, when He said that God blesses those who are poor and hungry, I thought it seemed contrary to self-improvement.

I've also noticed that in my parish and among people I know, those who live a serious Christian life tend to be rewarded with even heavier crosses. This is why I thought, "Oh hell no, I do not want to suffer even more," so I actually used porn/fapping as a cheap and quick way to sin, to avoid receiving the heavier cross.

 

[SCW]

Couldn't see that this has been shared yet.

Key points for me:

• Many men use porn to deal with stresses in life. To distract yourself you pull up a fantasy to get a hit of dopamine, only to know afterwards that everything was fake.
• Masturbation is less like self-pleasuring and more like self-abuse.
• Don't aim to "overcome" lust, because it's something you will battle with your whole life. Aim at healthy management.

 

[Kido Butai]

Prayer does work. Would you believe that, even in marriage, the temptation exists? The other day I was alone while the wife went to a baby shower. The temptation arrived & caught myself searching for it. But the holy Spirit tapped me on the shoulder, reminded me to pray. I repeated to myself that pornography is not part of the body of Christ.
Even in my happy marriage, the temptation exists. I hate you Satan

 

[staddlelateen]

Its not pointless and unhelpful. The church has helped people out of their sinful passions with the exact same methods for 2000 years. Telling people to pray, work on their faith and go to confession regularly will help them battle pornography and masturbation. I can attest to this. The history of the church attests to this.

All this talk of deforming your brain is just removing your own agency. It might be true that it damages your brain, but you can still stop jerking off if you really want to. It might take a while of falling and getting back up etc before you're completely free but its perfectly possible.

Telling yourself you have a broken brain that makes it nigh impossible to stop jerking off is exactly the defeatist attitude that will keep you on the ground.

Its this attitude of externalizing everything that keeps us weak. "Its not me, porn has damaged my brain and I'm the helpless victim of it" you are only shooting yourself in the foot with such an attitude.

You’re misrepresenting my position while simultaneously weakening your own stance to make it appear more defensible. This suggests that you either don’t fully understand your own argument or haven’t taken the time to accurately engage with mine. Here’s some advice, as you seem relatively young: before responding, take the time to genuinely read and understand other people’s positions. It will strengthen your arguments and lead to more productive discussions.

After considering the input from others, working on my anger and attempting to find out what is causing it, I believe I have found the answer.

Back in May, when I relapsed on Pascha, I sincerely regretted my actions and repented heavily. With God's grace, I was able to do NoPorn/NoFap for 98 days. This was a big deal for me because since I started jerking off back in junior high school until now, the longest I've been clean is 18 days (it didn't even break the three-week mark). For years, 90% of the time I relapsed in the first week, 9% relapsed after one week, and 1% after two weeks.

My ability to do 98 days of NoFap (and without nocturnal emissions at all!) came from God. During this time, I humbled myself, tried living a pious life, and routinely went to church. When I became tempted, I said my prayers instead of indulging in it. During this time, even porn and pictures of beautiful women rarely tempted me. Even when taking eurycoma longifolia and tribulus terrestris, instead of becoming horny, I became stronger, had more stamina, and was more socially active. Energy transmutation was real at that time.

But on the 98th day, hubris came to me, and I thought that I was strong now. I began testing my boundaries by purposefully watching porn and images of beautiful women, and we all know the results.

Now the question is, why haven't I been able to replicate my past success? Why do I keep failing to last more than a week by becoming unbearably angry?

Over the last 2-3 months, I've been holding a grudge against our Lord Jesus Christ and hating Him. I disagreed with many of His teachings and thought they were making me weak. I believed I could become stronger by ignoring parts of the teachings that didn't make sense because I saw many unchristian and non-Christian people succeeding in life.

This Friday, on the day of St. Demetrius of Thessalonica, there was a divine liturgy at my church. So, I went there even though I had to go through traffic jams during working hours. In the church, I took the liturgy seriously since the church was empty, and I could concentrate fully. After the divine liturgy, I felt precisely zero anger, hate, and other bad emotions. Until this evening, I feel at peace with zero anger.

I do not think this is a coincidence.

Another thing I found out is that I can only be healed by going to an Orthodox church.

During these last few months, I went several times to a Catholic church for the weekly mass and first Friday mass. But it did nothing for me. I thought that by praying in more places, I could get closer to God. No offense to the Catholic members here, but Catholicism does nothing for me. From now on, I will not go to a Catholic church to pray out of my own free will, except when invited by others, such as for weddings.

If there is a liturgy outside of Sunday divine liturgy in my Orthodox parish, I will make the attempt to attend it. I wish to repent for holding a grudge against the Lord.

Take a moment to genuinely read and understand others' positions before you respond because it doesn't address anything I said. Regarding the last part of your message, it's not a serious argument, and it can be easily refuted. Here's a restatement of the position in a way that highlights its logical flaws, followed by a counterfactual for further clarity:

Argument 1
Premises:
1: Someone walks into an evangelical prayer group and feels ecstatic.
2: Feeling God's presence is a sign that God wants you to join a church.

Conclusion:
God wants you to join the evangelical church.

Counterfactual
Premises:
1: As an Orthodox believer, you acknowledge the possibility of demons altering perception.
2: Demons don’t want you to go to heaven.
3: The only way to go to heaven is to be Catholic.

Conclusion:
The demons influenced your perception so that you felt nothing during a Catholic Mass, preventing you from becoming Catholic.

This is basic logic. Spend some time deeply understanding the principles and nuances of your faith before presenting arguments like these.