A week ago, I came across a clip from a mainstream podcast titled: “The Shocking Truth About NoFap.”
For whatever reason, I decided to watch it. And honestly, it felt off, featuring a psychiatrist, a urologist, and a porn director claiming NoFap is flawed and unscientific.
As one of the early voices in the space and the ‘granddaddy of the movement,’ I felt compelled to share alternative perspectives based on twelve years of experience. This includes:
- Why and how my journey began and still proceeds.
- NoFap’s impact on creativity, productivity, resilience, and performance, and
- Some Esoteric truths to it.
I’ll do this as a creator, bodybuilder, biohacker, polymath, lifelong learner, and above all, a modern person, using NoFap as a pillar in a holistic lifestyle, not an isolated practice for retreat. The purpose isn’t to convince anyone of anything but to let my results speak for themselves.
For those new to my work, I go by the name of POTB. I explore Esotericism and practical methods for unlocking human potential, creativity, focus, and self-mastery. Stick around if that sounds interesting! And if you need Magick manuals or diagrams or struggle with hunger, body weight, or discipline, check my books and digital stores—you’ll likely find something useful.
Sex
The episode gave the impression that the participants left people with only two options:
- To Fap, or
- To be celibate, abstaining from sex.
The actual possibility of having regular sex seemed absent. I find this preposterous, sad, and deeply disturbing.
As shared in my first book and old content, having proper sexual intercourse with real women was my reason to quit fapping. To put it bluntly:
Porn and masturbation killed my ability to both get and sustain boners.
True Story
Initially, I didn’t know about it. But my high-school sweetheart opened my eyes, warning me she wouldn’t bother with me if I had fapped.
I tried to limit it before meeting her. Yet, I didn’t quit, as I was heavily addicted.
In my early twenties, I had an affair with a married woman over ten years older than me — advanced, experienced, and unapologetic.
Deeply transforming and liberating, the experience involved an episode of her asking why my dick wouldn’t work while I felt all the shame in the world, mumbling
I’d rather sacrifice future erections just to have it work now.
While she laughed at me, at that moment, I didn’t want to simply quit porn. I felt an utter disgust with all people who fap, the porn industry, and everything, especially myself.
I was hitting the gym. Yet, somehow I also imagined chubby teenagers with gyno fapping and playing video games, thinking I didn’t want to be like them.
The inner voice replied. Then don’t be!
I quit and never looked back, enjoying every second of my time left with the lady. And that was the beginning of my journey.
Now, in my mid-thirties, my boners are stronger and more reliable than in my teens, cherishing my most meaningful relationship yet. Meanwhile, numerous younger males have tits and need dick pills. I even know a gym owner like that. This brings us to:
- Shame,
- Behavior control, and
- Testosterone.
So, let’s go through the first.
True Story
The shame coming from masturbation is unreal. People try to label it as ‘religious prudence.’ In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
- I started fapping in third grade.
- Lost my virginity either right before or after getting twelve with an eighteen or nineteen-year-old girl.
- As far as nocturnal emissions, I never cared about that. But I also pretty much never get any.
The fapping-induced shame is not immediate. It starts building as you mature, understanding what you are actually doing. As a kid, you programmed that:
- Drugs are the devil,
- Cigarettes and alcohol are somewhat okay since they are legal, and
- Porn and junk food are perfectly fine.
The shame comes from the deep awareness that you single-handedly destroy your ability to function as a human being.
- It is self-betrayal and defeat.
- It deeply affects what Maxwell Maltz calls your self-image.
If you cannot trust yourself to function optimally in bed, can you really trust yourself with challenges like building skills or starting businesses?
Regardless of what lobbyists want you to believe, sex with a real partner is critical to your human experience and success. Now, let’s get mystical.
Sephiroth
Dion Fortune was one of the most influential occultists who ever lived. In her words: “without a proper sex life, there really is no life at all.”
Qabalistically, your personal or subjective sex life resides in Netzach, the sphere of sex and love that reflects Geburah, the higher principle of conquering and objective victory. This is why Napoleon Hill emphasized that:
Well-accomplished people are also well-sexed.
Behavior Control
The podcast episode mentions behavior control. While coming from different places, this is an area where we actually find common ground.
Their take is that due to exerting a lot of willpower to stop yourself from fapping, you kinda navigate other aspects of your life better.
Now, I don’t know how this works, as according to its two models:
- Willpower is either a limited resource,
- Or a fluctuating emotion, not permanently available for the same things. So, here’s my take:
Dysfunction
The more you fap, the more you condition yourself to be only good for fapping, not real sex. As anyone knows, unlike real sex, let alone making a woman cum with your dick, fapping doesn’t require a boner.
You can fap and ejaculate with your dick as soft as a condom which makes you extremely addicted to cheap dopamine and, more so, incapable of having real sex.
You end up thinking of sex 24/7, but when it comes to actually getting some action, you cannot.
It’s like fat people being hungry and eating all the time due to broken leptin and ghrelin.
With NoFap, I only think of sex when the time for it comes. It complements OMAD, which eradicates hunger while letting you experience the true meaning of words:
The Appetite Comes With The Meal
If there’s no meal, there’s no appetite. If you are really adapted. So, it comes at a specific hour, not haphazardly throughout the day.
Behavior control occurs naturally without decision-making, internal negotiation, or self-control, all based on fragile willpower futile against primal urges.
As far as thirty-day challenges, they are nothing short of mindless willpower exertion. Life is a challenge in and of itself. Either initiate a meaningful, long-lasting change. Or don’t bother at all. If you want more, try:
- Coding daily for a hundred days,
- Or post quality long-form content weekly with scripting, broll, titles, and branding.
Let me know if either is challenging enough.
Testosterone
Testosterone is responsible for:
- Increased lean muscle mass,
- Lower fat percentage,
- Vitality, youthfulness, endurance, etc.
Psychologically, higher testosterone correlates with more:
- Confidence,
- Courage, and most importantly,
- Sense of high agency.
The participants claim that NoFap doesn’t affect testosterone. While I previously hadn’t measured mine, after NoFap, I experienced a drastic difference in all the mentioned.
NoFap, OMAD, and optimal nutrition made me switch from four to five weekly workouts to an almost daily, twice-a-day split.
In the previous years, conventional methods barely let me build a bit of muscle and get rid of my tits. Conversely, the mentioned three entirely transformed my physique and self-image in a single one.
My muscles got much fuller, denser, and more vascular, which, for those not knowing anything about bodybuilding, isn’t easy when you’re 6’4. Up until now, some doubt, I stood natural for the whole time. And for the record, I no longer train twice a day.
Besides growth hormone, fasting boosts testosterone, which, based on my experience, NoFap also does. The critical detail is that you need regular sexual intercourse so you can reset the spikes in production. You can research that on your own.
Psychologically, I’ve always been more introverted and shy. Alfred Adler helped challenge such notions more recently. But my transformation, in which NoFap played a critical role, made me ignore them earlier.
So, I decided to share it, by pushing content on my old channel. I also wrote an interdisciplinary book for others to do the same.
Years later, I still hate going in front of the camera, yet I have something much more powerful than confidence:
- Courage,
- Agency,
- Actual skills, which I’ve built while others fapped and thought of what to eat next.
As the title of the Adlerian book reads, I have the ‘Courage To Be Disliked.‘
Studies show that Testosterone facilitates a sense of agency. As a creative, I wrote another book and produced plenty of music and content. For the most part, I stay productive and inspired. So, I let my work speak for itself.
Side Effects
The podcast mentions pain during boners and ejaculation. Up until now, I have yet to experience any of those. In contrast, I remember the burning pain when urinating at least once a week before NoFap.
At one point, I was doing a series of rituals, culminating with the Supreme Pentagram. After switching to the most complete version I found, I started getting random erections for about two weeks.
It caught me off guard, but it confirmed that something deep was shifting as a result of synergy in my lifestyle. I refined the practice, and it stopped. Since then, I’ve reintroduced it without issue. Still, it taught me:
Spiritual work does influence the physical.
I also still find the SRP one of the most physically enhancing rites, especially if your lifestyle is on point.
It is one of the reasons it’s part of my daily ritual stack, on most weekdays.
Regardie built his OBW on the SRP and advocated that it has mighty invigorating effects. Well, I couldn’t agree more.
Now, I find I can ejaculate several times per week without a decrease in performance, which wasn’t the case when starting NoFap. Let me know your thoughts.
Not An All-Problems Fix
The second place where I agree is that NoFap is by no means an all-problems solution. It simply makes you more capable of solving whatever problems you have.
- It cannot make up for the life of a slob, but it can help you not be one.
- It won’t make you jacked if you don’t eat right and hit the gym, but it can help you with both.
- It won’t make you more capable or richer if you are not building skills and products.
So, in a sense, NoFap is like Magick. It increases the probability or likelihood of something happening, but doesn’t do anything for you.
- Some sit down and write.
- Others wait for angels and demons to do that for them.
- A third group does their rituals and writing, producing more and better quality work. NoFap can help be one of them.
Spiritual Traditions
The episode mentioned spiritual traditions, including gurus not seeing women. Here’s why this is irrelevant to the modern seekers.
We live in a global culture shaped by Western values. As Fortune emphasizes, the Western Dharma demands more life and conquering matter. Only the pathological type seeks surrender and retreat, leaving unconquered land.
Crowley integrated Eastern and Western techniques. Yet he also told us to live as Crowned and Conquering child Horus, who resides in Geburah, which is reflected in Netzach, which holds your sex life and fundamental dynamism.
All the people who shaped Western Magick were also well-sexed, some even too much. Others, like Gurdjieff, practiced cyclical celibacy, alternating complete abstinence with extremely frequent intercourse.
So, embrace your nature and sex, reject pornography, and conquer, making the most of what you have.
But that’s just my opinion. Let me know if you agree. And thank you for your time.