How Do You Feel After 90 Days Of NoFap?
(My Experience Plus Some Science)
So you're doing NoFap, but you still haven't been able to reach 90 days, and now you wonder how it feels to get there?
Well, I have personally had several 90 day straks in my life, and in this article I'm going to share my experience from a couple of them. They are not entirely identical, but the patterns they share are similar enough for it to make an interesting presentation.
Let's jump in right away…
The Road To 90 Days on NoFap Looked Like This…
The start of every 90 day streak were very tough for me, simply because I was addicted to porn.
And if I had fallen back into a period of “re addicting” myself with several porn binges in between, each of the streaks had a rough start to them (I put re-addicted in quotations, because some of the addiction related brain changes actually never go away).
This holds true for other men as well. I.e. if you are addicted to porn, your journey will be a lot tougher than for those who just try NoFap out as a fun challenge.
Anyway, here is a video I created on my YouTube channel a while back, where I share what the first few weeks on NoFap felt like…
…hint: they were not fun!
The first few weeks on NoFap were hell…
You can read more about ProVanax on the NoFap supplements page
The beginning of my NoFap journey
Day 1-8
- More stress, anxiety and insomnia
- Depression
- More procrastination (everything took more effort)
- Intense cravings for all kinds of instant gratification stuff (porn, alcohol, junk food, aimless YouTube browsing etc).
- No desire to talk to or meet other people
- Watery and lifeless eyes
Those were some things that hit me during my first 8 days or so.
Low dopamine is obviously one big reason behind why those nasty things happen.
Day 8-14
During this period the procrastination subsided a bit, but instead it was like I often descended into a darker kind of depression.
You know that kind of depression where you go “what's the point with this?…what's the point with anything?”
I use to call this period “the void”, simply because it felt like a deep emptiness. And not in a good way.
The first two weeks were the hardest – in terms of relapse risk and nasty feelings
For me, the first two weeks were always the hardest in terms of relapse risk. Sure the second week was easier than the first week, but it was still plenty hard.
But once I got past two weeks, it was always like I reached a new level, in terms of “being able to stay strong”. That said, I have relapsed many, many, many times past week 2 as well, so it's not like I'm saying it suddenly became easy. Easier, yes, but not easy.
Another thing to note here is that by this time I most often descended into a pretty deep flatline. For most of my loger streaks, the flatline lasted to around day 60-80, but I have been experiencing shorter flatlines even after that, sometimes pretty long after passing day 90 mark.
If you don't know that the flatline is, you can read more about it in the post, NoFap flatline, what is it and how to get out of it?
Days 15-60
I'm not even sure if I should write that much about this period, as they tended to be a bit different during my streaks. However, one common pattern is that I started having much more drive to work on my goals.
And all those daily chores, that seemed to be taking a a humongous amount of effort in the first week, was now starting to become pretty easy. Even to the point of me often going: “why do I use to be I so unwilling to do this?”
How I felt after 90 days of NoFap
Since I know you found this article by searching for: “how do you feel after 90 days of NoFap”, I'm not going to draw out on it any longer, but I'll go ahead and list all the actual benefits I felt after 90 days on my NoFap journey.
The most noticeable benefits I noticed after 90 days of NoFap were…
- Much more energy and drive in general.
- More confidence and better self-esteem.
- A desire to work on my goals. Note that I said desire – as in, I no longer had to force myself (for the most part, of course there will still be days of lower motivation, that's just life).
- Less anxiety (I still have it, but it was much worse in the midst of my porn addiction years).
- A higher baseline level of happiness. I sometimes even have this child-like excitement for life again.
- Women attraction (not super noticeable -but compared to before- there's definitely something there).
- Needing less sleep.
- Feeling a bit stronger in the gym.
- Better focus and concentration.
- More attraction towards real life people instead of pixels on a screen (and thus my libido and erections started functioning much better as well).
- Real sex feeling amazing.
Now, I also want to point out that for me, and for most other people as well, it's not like there is an on/off switch when it comes to NoFap benefits during your journey. And, there's definitely nothing magical about the 90 day mark per se, it's just that for many people, the brain's dopamine system take about 3 months or so to recover from having been hammered with a porn addiction (still varies from person to person of course).
And let me assure you, I personally continued to experience even more and stronger benefits long after having passed the 90 day mark…
…so just keep going and it will… keep…getting… better… and better.
What NoFap didn't give me that I had hoped for…
There are also a few benefits I've been reading about over the years, that NoFap didn't give me. That I would have liked to get.
- It didn't improve my skin (probably diet related, maybe autoimmune)
- It didn't get rid of my anxiety (it reduced it a bit, but that's it – maybe autoimmune)
- I can still get bouts of depression (it is, however, so much better now)
- Still have joint pain (again, might be autoimmune or diet related)
I think it's important to note that, while NoFap is great, it's not a magic bullet that will suddenly fix all problems in life. I mean, that should be bloody obvious, but sometimes people can become so dogmatic that I still feel it needs to be pointed out.
What to do if you haven't reach 90 days yet…
If you haven't reach 90 days of NoFap even after several attempts, you might have a real porn addiction. Now, don't freak out out that, because the fact is, that is almost becoming the norm in today's world.
That said, a porn addiction will still hold you back in life.
So I recommend you download my FREE quit porn guide right here and then take it from there. Now, it's not a big online course or anything like that, but it is very helpful and it's a good way for you to start.
I'm Scandinavian Bob, and thanks for reading my post.
You can >>Download<< my FREE guide below to help you…
Related post: When does NoFap get easier?