Woops, took me a bit to get back to this. Hm, I think I got completely sidetracked with the concept of addiction when I was composing my initial response. It's

Woops, took me a bit to get back to this. Hm, I think I got completely sidetracked with the concept of addiction when I was composing my initial response. It's completely reasonable to say that I described a statistically unlikely worst-case scenario, and I'm glad to hear your situation isn't that bad! Looking at it from a different angle, removing high fructose corn syrup and other forms of highly concentrated sugar from your diet is an extremely healthy thing to do; HFCS can become addictive. What we're describing is exactly the same thing, if you ask me; just remove the concentrated/hyperoptimized stimulati, and everything will balance itself back out. Yeah, it'll be a huge adjustment and kind of depressing to begin with but it's for the best. As I said in my previous comment, actual sex is what's enjoyable, and everything else is just a means to an end. IMO, guilt-tripping people into thinking "running the photocopier" (if you will) is unconditionally wrong is itself a hugely imbalanced view to have. Also, /r/NoFap focuses on "short periods of abstinence" - these might be weeks/months long, but they aren't permanent. I'm honestly not sure how people would abstain, myself. Spending more time with others sounds like a great idea, but IMHO it cannot be a full replacement for what I describe in the previous paragraph, and trying to treat it as such may cause you to wind up in some suboptimal situations (continuous distraction leading to, uh, unexpected relationships, etc).