His Porn Addiction, PIED, and Flatline May Cost Him the Girl of His Dreams

I've got a letter from a young man who has already recovered from PIED. But he strayed from the pornfree path and brought his PIED back. He met the lady of his dreams and stopped his porn use again, but he is now deep in flatline. Will he recover or lose the girl?

Anon's words are in italics. My comments and responses are in bold.

Hello Noah. I hope this message finds you well. I am looking to share my story with PMO addiction and PIED so I can hear your opinion on how long it would take me to recover. 

First I'll tell you right now the general answer I give to this question. As long as they are able to follow the guidelines of recovery (mostly just stay away from porn and porn substitutes), most men will see very significant progress within 90 days and full recovery within a year.

I am 21 years old. I started masturbating at the age of 10, usually every day, even twice a day in some cases. At 12, I started watching porn after my friends started bragging about watching it and I got hooked really fast. I started watching once or twice a day. Slowly, my grades started to decrease and I started experimenting social anxiety, especially around girls. This is why I started getting into self-improvement and trying to find ways to be more open and less anxious in social settings. I had no ideea that my porn addiction was the root of this problem, because everyone said watching it is healthy and normal.

People often confuse "normal" or "common" with "healthy" and "right". But you're still young with plenty of life left ahead of you. Now that you're an adult capable of thinking for yourself and taking decisive action, you can right your ship and experience many decades of the mental health you deserve.

Time passed and I found myself in the first year of high school. Despite my anxiety, I managed to make friends, and work on becoming better better at talking to girls, while still using porn daily. Still, while other boys were having their first sexual experiences, I was still stuck in the relapse cycle. Around that time I started experiencing PIED. My morning wood was becoming less frequent and I stopped having so many random erections during the day. I started researching and found out about NoFap. It was a bit of a relief. I found out there were plenty of people struggling with porn, so I finally admitted this was the problem holding me back.

Trying to navigate dating and relationships while hooked on porn and struggling with PIED is like trying to swim with an engine block tied to your ankle. I feel you. But I'm happy you discovered that you're far from alone, and that there's a lot to hope for.

Committing to NoFap was hard, but after getting to a 2 week streak, Covid hit and the lockdown started. I started feeling depressed and watching porn multiple times a day, even binging sometimes and escalating to more hardcore/niche stuff. I completely lost my morning wood, I was unmotivated and shut down. In 2021, I decided to take NoFap more seriously and fight this addiction, so I joined a support group and documented myself. I started feeling benefits almost instantly, and even tough I was relapsing once every few weeks, my PIED eventually dissapeared. I had morning wood everyday, frequent wet dreams and everything was pretty much back to normal.

COVID was a universal adversity. We were all affected by it at different levels. But the only certainty in life is that more adversity is coming. You can't control what life throws at you, but you can control how you respond to it. When COVID came and the quarantines with it, on a personal level I took that as an opportunity. I was just starting to work on my online courses for porn addiction and PISD recovery at the time, so I saw quarantine as a way to really buckle down without distractions and get those done. They've helped hundreds of people since and become a recurring source of revenue for me.

I share this as an example of how reality is what we make it. Everything can be interpreted in either a positive or negative way. Every adversity can be an opportunity.

I'm glad you came around and saw so much progress. If I had been in your circle at that time, I would have warned you how easy it is to slip back into old habits and sabotage everything you've worked for. Unless you fend off complacence, it's all too common.

I even started dating a girl in 2022, and hit 90 days while we were together. Unfortunately, it ended quickly and I started experiencing a sudden flatline. My mojo stopped working, I started panicking, thinking my PIED is back and I fell for the trap of "checking if my penis still works". I fell down the slippery slope and started using porn daily again. Basically, right back to square 1. After that I had multiple attempts at getting back on NoFap, but all were unsuccessful. As time passed, I lost hope that I will ever live a life without porn and masturbation.

This is why I recommend two things to every man I work with. First, educate yourself about recovery. If you know that you're likely to encounter at least one flatline and how to handle it, then you're much less likely to panic and return to porn in order to feel your libido again.

Second, join a community. It can be a 12-step group, a NoFap group, a church group, or the Support and Discussion Group that I run: https://myliferebooted.mykajabi.com/RSD

This journey is so much harder when you're walking alone. Get yourself a team like this. A regular place you can check in with others, share what's happening with you, and get the clarity of perspective that others can offer you.

Everything changed at the beginning of this year (2025) when I met this amazing girl. After our first date, I stopped feeling the urge to masturbate and got back on NoFap. Unfortunately, I was still sometimes looking intentionally for pictures of hot women on Instagram, but I stopped doing that because I realised it was really slowing down my progress, and putting me at risk of relapse. I started feeling some of the benefits: more confidence, energy and motivation, less brainfog, but morning wood was nonexistent.

Right now I am on day 91 and I think I've been in a bad flatline for a while. I am unable to get hard with my girlfriend, and when I get hard, I lose it really fast. My libido is very low and morning wood is almost inexistent. I sometimes, very rarely, get erections in public (happened maybe 5 times during this streak). I told my girlfriend about my problem, but I sugar coated it. I'm afraid she'll lose her patience and leave me.

The most likely way you'll lose her at this point is lack of communication and honesty. I strongly recommend you open the conversation again so that you're on the same page. She deserves to know what's really going on. And you will benefit from a partner who can fully support you. Check out this video/article for a detailed guide on having that conversation: https://myliferebooted.mykajabi.com/blog/how-do-i-tell-her-about-my-pied-porn-induced-erectile-dysfunction

How long do you think it will take before I am actually recovered and able to use my penis again? I would really like to know your opinion. It might be useful to know my sessions were usually 10-20 minutes long. Sorry for the long story and thank you for what you do.

Best regards,
Anon

The unfortunate truth is that recovery from PIED usually takes longer the second time around. The more times you teach your brain that porn is not gone forever—even after months of being pornfree—the longer your brain will resist recovery the next time you quit using. You can and will still recover, but you MUST do whatever it takes to remain pornfree. You will face more adversity. What if this flatline persists for 8 months? What if your girlfriend leaves you and it takes two years to find another connection? You need to be able to remain pornfree through adversity like this, or you're dooming yourself to have to go through this process over and over.

As for how long your current flatline will last, only time will tell. It's likely that it will end in the next three months, but it's possible that it will last much longer. Given what you have told me however, I don't expect it to last for more than six months in total.