In my experience I could never square the circle about PMO being a false pleasure after reading Easy Peasy over and over. I never felt any more clearheaded, it never effected my ability to engage with a partner, and it never made me less motivated to find a partner. I don't think just find a partner 4Head is a good idea for my quality of life. I don't feel any less capable of engaging with my career. My lifts don't go down. I still talk to my friends. I even went to a therapist to talk about it and he said his clients who no longer suffer manage to find a balance in their life, not that they're able to break the shackles.
I even looked at all the studies that 4chan likes to throw around and came away thinking that the claims about gray matter and other brain chemistry were not as concrete and substantiated as one might be led to believe. For example, the conclusion of one study made no claim that it was reducing the gray matter of the brain because the experiment wasn't designed to differentiate those with already less gray matter who might be thereby be predisposed to liking porn or something. There was one about how it acts similar to cocaine, but it showed how harmful cocaine is in the sense that it imitates things like orgasm and eating. Another one claimed that internet addiction should be a DSM-V umbrella for more specific ways to engage in harmful activities on the internet like gambling, gaming, porn, etc. not that porn was specifically in some psychiatric black hole (or something you couldn't use a therapist to engage with).
Meanwhile there are things I can do with significantly less effort that have a much larger effect on my inter personals and brain chemistry: nutrition, reading, sleep hygiene, meditation, lifting, helped people in need, etc. have all clearly and tangibly increased my quality of life. Orgasm is a compulsion for me and I like to maximize the pleasure from it, sure. Is it clearly and obviously harming me? No. For me, hearing that religiosity is more correlated with feeling like you have a problem than frequency of masturbation was telling. I just stopped caring and it stopped weighing down my mind. I gave it my full and undivided attention for months and walked away from nofap.
In my experience I could never square the circle about PMO being a false pleasure after reading Easy Peasy over and over. I never felt any more clearheaded, it never effected my ability to engage with a partner, and it never made me less motivated to find a partner. I don't think just find a partner 4Head is a good idea for my quality of life. I don't feel any less capable of engaging with my career. My lifts don't go down. I still talk to my friends. I even went to a therapist to talk about it and he said his clients who no longer suffer manage to find a balance in their life, not that they're able to break the shackles.
I even looked at all the studies that 4chan likes to throw around and came away thinking that the claims about gray matter and other brain chemistry were not as concrete and substantiated as one might be led to believe. For example, the conclusion of one study made no claim that it was reducing the gray matter of the brain because the experiment wasn't designed to differentiate those with already less gray matter who might be thereby be predisposed to liking porn or something. There was one about how it acts similar to cocaine, but it showed how harmful cocaine is in the sense that it imitates things like orgasm and eating. Another one claimed that internet addiction should be a DSM-V umbrella for more specific ways to engage in harmful activities on the internet like gambling, gaming, porn, etc. not that porn was specifically in some psychiatric black hole (or something you couldn't use a therapist to engage with).
Meanwhile there are things I can do with significantly less effort that have a much larger effect on my inter personals and brain chemistry: nutrition, reading, sleep hygiene, meditation, lifting, helped people in need, etc. have all clearly and tangibly increased my quality of life. Orgasm is a compulsion for me and I like to maximize the pleasure from it, sure. Is it clearly and obviously harming me? No. For me, hearing that religiosity is more correlated with feeling like you have a problem than frequency of masturbation was telling. I just stopped caring and it stopped weighing down my mind. I gave it my full and undivided attention for months and walked away from nofap.