75 replies to this topic

[penisbreath]

Are there any programs/chrome add-ons that let you block a site and then input a password (possibly punched in at random)? I've found generic blockers that let you block a site, but it's easy to just turn permission on/off. There's one site in particular I'm kinda addicted to and I wanted to find a way to ban it from my comp without letting me revisit it. 

[typ3z3r0]

Are there any programs/chrome add-ons that let you block a site and then input a password (possibly punched in at random)? I've found generic blockers that let you block a site, but it's easy to just turn permission on/off. There's one site in particular I'm kinda addicted to and I wanted to find a way to ban it from my comp without letting me revisit it. 

 

You could block it in your hosts file, which should hopefully be more annoying for you to remove. :P

[penisbreath]

 

Are there any programs/chrome add-ons that let you block a site and then input a password (possibly punched in at random)? I've found generic blockers that let you block a site, but it's easy to just turn permission on/off. There's one site in particular I'm kinda addicted to and I wanted to find a way to ban it from my comp without letting me revisit it. 

 

You could block it in your hosts file, which should hopefully be more annoying for you to remove. :P

 

 

How do I go about doing that?

[ajmorgan99]

Sex addiction is  a BEHAVIORAL addiction. NOT a chemical addiction. come on people. Drugs actually GO into the brain and mimic endogenous neurotransmitter systems. Sex, masturbation, orgasms - all natural rewards. waaayyyyyy different. An orgasm cannot go into the brain and act as a receptor ligand.

Edited by ajmorgan99, 12 March 2015 - 02:28 PM.

[Synzael]

The trick I use personally is I allow myself to masturbate but I just edge. I use my kegel muscles and prevent orgasm. I never orgasm more than once a week because it wastes so many of your bodies resources. In this way I prevent internet porn from having power over me but restraining orgasm. It's not masturbation that's the evil it's uncontrolled constant pointless orgams with none of the physical aerobic exercise benefits of sex.

[YOLF]

The trick I use personally is I allow myself to masturbate but I just edge. I use my kegel muscles and prevent orgasm. I never orgasm more than once a week because it wastes so many of your bodies resources. In this way I prevent internet porn from having power over me but restraining orgasm. It's not masturbation that's the evil it's uncontrolled constant pointless orgams with none of the physical aerobic exercise benefits of sex.

Might want to be careful with holding it back. At least be sure to urinate afterwards, but holding it back can cause damage and inflammation to... not remembering what the "pipes" are called... In older individuals who may be at risk of developing prostate and other problems it can become apparent that the damage and inflammation caused by this can contribute to aggravating/developing subclinical pathologies. If you happen to be that sensitive to tracking your health, you'll probably feel it at any age or frequency. Just because the swelling etc go away doesn't mean you've completely recovered. This is where behavior influences genetics.

[YosefANaumovich]

I also call bullshit on the claims about abstinence having motivatory or nootropic benefits. Being horny all the time is an anti-nootropic, if anything.

This is because you're not doing it right. If you want to feel the great rewards of abstinence then you have to be willing to stop thinking about the sexual while simultaneously using your mind or body for something that drains your energy, such as physical or mental workouts, a very demanding job or something alike. Then, you will feel the reward.

 

In my case, I do physical workouts (which, ironically, causes me to be less interested in the sexual) while refusing any thoughts about the sexual that may arise, and I do not seek women in anyway and simply keep to myself. On the 3rd day of abstinence, my confidence, strength and mood increases to a noteworthy point. On the 5th day of abstinence, the mentioned effects are even more pronounced, while on the 7th day the effects are very strong though sadly also the libido - which results in the failure of abstinence often. 

 

The problem is that "sexual freedom" - the sexual revolution - makes it hard to do daily tasks, such as doing one's job, without being forced into seeing sexual things such as the breasts, bottom, legs, or whatever, of women (i.e. women are wearing tight clothes now more than ever before in human history), not to mention the constant softcore pornography on the Internet, in TV commercials and on product advertisements.

[random9876]

I started this topic 4 years ago, and I am surprised that it still continued to get responses from people over the years. It seems that this has struck a cord with other members here. 

 

This thread appears to be getting a lot of attention despite having less than 70 posts. This thread has over 160,000 views. I am rather astonished, given the fact that's it's only 3 pages long. 

 

I started SSRI treatment for depression 2 years ago. I am on Lexapro and Welbutrin. When I started Lexapro, which was the first of the 2 drugs I started, I largely lost my desire to masturbate, and I had increased motivation to succeed in daily tasks. Perhaps this is because Lexapro helped treat my depression. But perhaps it's something else: I am wondering if the Lexapro was treating a side effect of my porn use indirectly, by causing me to masturbate less, and thereby having positive effects on my daily life by helping me resensitize my brain to rewards. 

 

I started taking Welbutrin due to the sexual side effects of Lexapro, and it worked well at first, but I noticed it also increased my use of internet porn. I also notice, anecdotally, an increase in depressive episodes following a marathon session of masturbation. Miraculously, I got a girlfriend but I have trouble staying hard and having an orgasm with her. I am experiencing sexual dysfunction with my girlfriend but not while I masturbate to hardcore internet porn from sites such as evilangel, legalporno, julesjordan and others.  I do not have erectile problems when masturbating to internet porn, only with my girlfriend. 

 

However, this is merely anecdotal evidence, which we cannot rely on if we want to look at the world objectively.

 

I am posting now because I've read a paper which worries me.  I sincerely hope that I am wrong and that internet porn and masturbation do not have any effect on motivation and sexual performance (this paper concerns the latter). However, new evidence is coming to light which increasingly puts this possibility on the back foot. 

 

 

 

http://www.mdpi.com/...328X/6/3/17/htm

 

Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports

 

Traditional factors that once explained men’s sexual difficulties appear insufficient to account for the sharp rise in erectile dysfunction, delayed ejaculation, decreased sexual satisfaction, and diminished libido during partnered sex in men under 40. This review (1) considers data from multiple domains, e.g., clinical, biological (addiction/urology), psychological (sexual conditioning), sociological; and (2) presents a series of clinical reports, all with the aim of proposing a possible direction for future research of this phenomenon. Alterations to the brain's motivational system are explored as a possible etiology underlying pornography-related sexual dysfunctions. This review also considers evidence that Internet pornography’s unique properties (limitless novelty, potential for easy escalation to more extreme material, video format, etc.) may be potent enough to condition sexual arousal to aspects of Internet pornography use that do not readily transition to real-life partners, such that sex with desired partners may not register as meeting expectations and arousal declines. Clinical reports suggest that terminating Internet pornography use is sometimes sufficient to reverse negative effects, underscoring the need for extensive investigation using methodologies that have subjects remove the variable of Internet pornography use. In the interim, a simple diagnostic protocol for assessing patients with porn-induced sexual dysfunction is put forth.

 

 

 

Edited by random9876, 22 November 2016 - 06:15 PM.

[jack black]

I do not have erectile problems when masturbating to internet porn, only with my girlfriend.

Well yes, I had that problem before. The reality is porn is much more stimulating that the real thing in a monogamous relationship. By a huge factor (x5-10 would be my guess). I think this has to do with novelty that men crave.

Since I started my supplements Stack and improved testosterone levels, I feel less desire to seek porn. Recently I stopped all stimulants (including caffeine and alcohol) and feel even better. Almost feels like the receptors recovered. I'm slow MAOA type, YMMV.

[Mind_Paralysis]

 

I do not have erectile problems when masturbating to internet porn, only with my girlfriend.

Well yes, I had that problem before. The reality is porn is much more stimulating that the real thing in a monogamous relationship. By a huge factor (x5-10 would be my guess). I think this has to do with novelty that men crave.

Since I started my supplements Stack and improved testosterone levels, I feel less desire to seek porn. Recently I stopped all stimulants (including caffeine and alcohol) and feel even better. Almost feels like the receptors recovered. I'm slow MAOA type, YMMV.

 

 

Curious... I'm not the same at all! I watched probably ten times more porn BEFORE I became sexually active! Some of it I am not enthused about at all these days...

 

But once I had the female physical body, in reach, for my rather RAVENOUS hands, then the real deal was GOD-like! I finally broke through the shyness and inability to find a mate which SCT causes (curiously, it actually seems to be the ONLY disease that causes this MORE than Autism...).

 

I'm not at all as interested in porn as before - however, now that I'm once more single again, porn is somewhat more interesting - I find that masturbation about two times a week seems to be the sweet-spot - less and I feel like SH*T actually! Makes my depression worse!

More isn't more rewarding though, and has diminishing ends.

 

I believe this is something which has been noted in the thread before though - that testosterone actually fluctuates during the month, and that it may actually be QUITE natural to release every other week or so - I believe every two weeks, or three weeks, was the number mentioned - based on the mean fluctuation of testosterone.

 

I suppose those might be the times when a man DID get some action back in the stone-age - tight-knit group, lots of work, but a need to release built-up tension and to strengthen the bonds of the group.

 

Would you not agree that this hypothesis seems sensible?

[jack black]

But once I had the female physical body, in reach, for my rather RAVENOUS hands, then the real deal was GOD-like!

Believe me, there is a huge difference between girlfriend and wife even if that's the same person. Novelty, man.

[MattMcFly1986]

The trick I use personally is I allow myself to masturbate but I just edge. I use my kegel muscles and prevent orgasm. I never orgasm more than once a week because it wastes so many of your bodies resources. In this way I prevent internet porn from having power over me but restraining orgasm. It's not masturbation that's the evil it's uncontrolled constant pointless orgams with none of the physical aerobic exercise benefits of sex.

Don't edge! Edging only further confuses the system. Like cooking a meal in front of a starving man and then not giving him any. Edging is like drowning your synapses in an indefinite dopamine rush. Speaking from experience it always leads to relapse / PMO sooner or later, because it is not satiating without a grande finale. If you absolutely have to masturbate, do it quickly and be done with it.

 

On the other hand, I'm not sure how karezza (sex without orgasm) works any different, but people swear by that.

 

I started taking Welbutrin due to the sexual side effects of Lexapro, and it worked well at first, but I noticed it also increased my use of internet porn. I also notice, anecdotally, an increase in depressive episodes following a marathon session of masturbation. Miraculously, I got a girlfriend but I have trouble staying hard and having an orgasm with her. I am experiencing sexual dysfunction with my girlfriend but not while I masturbate to hardcore internet porn from sites such as evilangel, legalporno, julesjordan and others.  I do not have erectile problems when masturbating to internet porn, only with my girlfriend. 
 

The acronym for that is PIED (Porn induced sexual dysfunction). I've suffered from that for years. Managed to slightly better my almost sexless relationship after a few weeks of noFap.

The problem with a lot of men's masturbation rituals isn't the masturbation itself, it's the hunt for the right material. The novelty of clicking through 20-50 tabs of images. The novelty of switching partners and interests at the click of a button. Always edging, sometimes for hours, of nearly reaching a climax. THAT is what is messing people's dopamine receptors up. I know it did with me. Worse of all, I used to smoke a joint once or twice a week for a couple of years, and I'd top that off with edging to porn for a good hour. I was drowning my synapses in dopamine. noFap definitely helps fight it. Get away from porn. Do not search for images. The abundance of it will mess you up.

I began noFap in February and managed to abstain from PMO for 48 days. Then I relapsed because I let my guard down after smoking weed. So in April I quit weed and went on my second noFap streak. This one lasted 96 days, and this time I relapsed because of post-party drunkenness. During those 96 days I added some healthy new things to my already pretty healthy lifestyle (vegetarian diet, exercise 3-4 times a week, rarely alcohol, never smoke tobacco), like Mindfulness Meditation (through the Headspace App). Still I relapsed badly after 96 days and since July haven't been able to abstain for longer than 1-3 weeks.

Unfortunately the following symptoms I've been stuck with for a couple of years never left me, not even while doing noFap

- brain fog, lack of focus
- easily distracted, endless procrastination
- slurred, monotone speech, increasingly more limited vocabulary (I feel and sound slow)
- difficulty getting positively or negatively (sadness) emotional, save for being easily irritable and frustrated (I can still spontaneously laugh once or twice at something fun, thankfully)

- low libido outside of masturbation to porn

- not getting much out of social interaction - selective social anxiety
- tired and lethargic

 

This is interesting, from a female perspective I used to compulsively masturbate and exercise. Not because I wanted to, but because I got that rush I was so desperately lacking otherwise. I constantly felt tired and lethargic and sick of everything otherwise. It was like getting high, feel better, then crash even lower so you want to do it again. I'm now getting my dopamine from medication, and feeling a lot better - both the need to masturbate and exercise to feel better are gone. So, rather than a cause I suggest a need to masturbate compulsively is a symptom. Your brain is trying to suck some dopamine from whereever it can because it's lacking.

Now I get a high from exercise and when I occasionally masturbate, but I don't get a crash, and I don't NEED to do either. The compulsive aspect has disappeared because my brain chemistry is fixed.

 

I didn't get the crash straight after, but some time after, yes, because I started craving a new high. The dopamine was too low again.

As far as exercise is concerned, it was unhealthy for the same reason masturbation was - I wasn't doing it because it was all that great, I was doing it because I felt like crap if I didn't. It was a compulsion, akin to an OCD ritual - you don't do it because it gives you something, you do it because it takes away the crappy feeling.

For some time. Then it was back to crap. Like a junkie craving the next fix. Unhealthily, insanely depressed, apathetic, a slob. That's not what exercise is supposed to do to a person. It's supposed to do the opposite. Drugs keep me constant, it's not yo yoing up and down like it was with exercise and masturbating. Neither of those were healthy, despite being more natural than medication.

 

This describes my situation very well. For as easy as it was to quit weed, PMO / hours of edging to online porn keeps pulling me back in. For me, the hardest drug to quit. Clearly something is missing in my brain chemistry. I suspect low dopamine / high acetylcholine are the culprits.

 

I had started Wellbutrin in September and that only worked for a week during the middle of the two months I took it, then it was back to where I started (but with AD side effects like increased irritability, social anxiety, sweating). For the last week I've been on a Moclobemide (reversible MAOI), but so far it is only making me more tired and lethargic.

[Keizo]

From a cognitive psychological standpoint, a person's views on masturbation could impact depression/anxiety symptoms. People who do it frequently but believe it's bad for them (or worse, believe that they're bad for doing it) would be in a nasty approach/avoidance conflict every time they got horny.

This, plus the prolactin thing, plus the lack of data supporting the hypothesis, leads me to consider it unfounded that masturbation induces anhedonia via dopamine receptor desensitization. However, it can be a trigger for depressive symptoms in people who have a pre-existing judgment against it, and thus against themselves for doing it. Anhedonia would be a natural result of the depressive pathology, if it got out of control. If it didn't get out of control, significant anhedonia would be quite unlikely.

I might as well make the argument that being a devout catholic would cause much increased pleasure from masturbation in all regards and an improved sex-life because the subject is taboo and thus more titilating, more exciting due to novelty. 

[jadamgo]

I disagree that you might as well make the Catholicism argument, because it's not as reasonable as the cognitive psychology argument. Sure, there are folk psychological theories that taboos make sex more exciting, but there are also folk psychological theories that repression makes sex less pleasing. Given those contradictions, it's wise to shift gears from stories told on the streets to positions backed by evidence from the cognitive, affective, and behavioral sciences. 

 

I'll start. Here's a study on sexual satisfaction in married couples. Three different measures of religiosity did not significantly correlate to the couples' sexual satisfaction. However, a lack of sexual inhibitions did positively correlate, meaning that a greater score of "sexual uninhibitedness" implied a higher measure of "sexual satisfaction". http://search.proque...igsite=gscholar

 

I'll also vouch for edging and karezza. They both lead to the ability to have orgasms without ejaculating. Not that I think ejaculating is bad; it's just that I find 10-20 orgasms better than just 1. Also, you end up at such a state of deep satisfaction that it doesn't matter whether you ejaculate or not at the end. Sure, there's a bit more energy if you don't ejaculate, and a bit more relaxation if you do -- but either way, after having that many orgasms, your state of mind is as far away from anhedonia as you can imagine. Happiness, with no crash. Just like exercise, eating well, meditation, positive relationships... pretty much everything else that, in moderation, fits into a healthy lifestyle.

 

To be clear, though, what I described above is only the case with real sex and with every-once-in-a-while ordinary masturbation, as in the kind that doesn't involve porn. Masturbating several times a day to porn -- that seems unhealthy. There's a steadily-growing evidence base that watching porn frequently (like daily, or worse, several times a day) increases your chances of sexual dysfunction. I certainly have my own ideas about why it does that, and there's plenty of speculation, but for now perhaps the most important thing is to say that no matter what the reasons are, it's clear there's something bad going on.

 

The literature review shown above in post #68 is well-done and should certainly be read. It's important to point out that this very review takes an in-depth look at the dopamine system in regards to watching porn, and the only study cited that mentions both porn and anhedonia (under the umbrella of "depressive symptoms") does not find a link between the two. https://www.ncbi.nlm...ubmed/26803060/

Ventral striatum activity in this contrast was correlated with the self-reported symptoms of Internet pornography addiction. The subjective symptom severity was also the only significant predictor in a regression analysis with ventral striatum response as dependent variable and subjective symptoms of Internet pornography addiction, general sexual excitability, hypersexual behavior, depression, interpersonal sensitivity, and sexual behavior in the last days as predictors. 

 

In this study, the (presumably dopaminergic) activity in the ventral striatum related to porn-watching was associated with reports that one may be behaviorally dependent on porn, but it was not linked to depression. That doesn't mean such a link is impossible, but it does mean this study looked for it, and didn't find it.

 

What porn is linked to, is sexual dysfunction. That particular study on the ventral striatum didn't look for it, but plenty of other studies in the literature review from post 68 did. For reference, here's that link again: https://www.ncbi.nlm...les/PMC5039517/

Edited by jadamgo, 27 November 2016 - 05:43 AM.

[Mind_Paralysis]

 

But once I had the female physical body, in reach, for my rather RAVENOUS hands, then the real deal was GOD-like!

Believe me, there is a huge difference between girlfriend and wife even if that's the same person. Novelty, man.

 

 

I suppose this is why Borderline and Histrionic women in perticular have such an easy time hooking men in their clutches - they ARE actually highly sexually creative and experimental - the life I had together with my BPD/HPD (I actually realized she's probably more histrionic recently) was god-awful, terrible in many regards - EXCEPT for the Sex - she was continously experimental and prodigious at inducing a feeling of sexual novelty - this is one of the reasons why I stayed so long, I think.

 

She's actually, now that I think about it, the only longer relationship I've ever had... More than a year - and I must admit, there's a part of me that still yearns for her...

 

That's probably why so many of the Men's Right's Advocates are somewhat obsessed with Borderlines, mentioning how they made them mad at women, et c, how the sex was the best, et c - these women can, at first, appear as the ULTIMATE partner for a man - and actually evoke a GREATER sense of partnership - why would I need porn or other women, when the woman I have can somehow satisfy every possible need I have?

 

They speak to men's simpler aspects, and we take the bait easily.
 

[kurdishfella]

Usually mental health issues is not caused by a singular problem but mutitude. Fapping is natural just in balance. For me if I do it too much without waiting I get excess dopamine and feel like shit.