Talk:NoFap

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Randomised Control Trial impossible?

How would a scientific evidence on the NoFap methode even look like? You have 100 people showing social anxiety and lack of motivation. You set 50 on NoFap and the other 50 on placebo Nofap ? ( means taking away pornographie and acces to masturbation while they dont know)and measure afterwords if the effect is higher than just placebo? It seems quite impossible....

As far as anecdotal evidence is concerned.... For every pseudoscience that runs on anecdotal evidence, you can easily find same amout of 'reverse anecdotal evidence' of people having gone through same methods but having had no results. Thats where it gets interesting in NOFAP. You barely find people claiming:' I had social anxiety, I made NOFAP for 90 days, and no improvment at all. While you find 10 thounds anecdotal evidence claiming reduced social anxiety and more energy. ^{— Unsigned, by: 2A02:A03F:58CF:5000:B021:5FA5:700A:9088 / talk}

"While you find 10 thounds anecdotal evidence claiming reduced social anxiety and more energy." Argumentum ad populum. Further, Nofap is basically just recycled Abstinence garbage with a hefty does of misogyny and pseudoscience thrown in. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 16:19, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

You ask what scientific evidence would look like, and literally the previous post immediately above is about a study into the health effects of masturbation. It would be possible to do a trial comparing NoFap to alternative methods of relaxation/improving mental wellbeing such as yoga or massage. How you would find find subjects is another matter, but if Joey from Friends was willing to abstain for science[1], then anybody can? --Annanoon (talk) 16:25, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

OK. So just to understand correctly. Would the following procedure be scientific? : You ll take 1000 random guys ( who never did nofap, yoga, or meditation so far). You split them in 3 groups. They do nofap, 20 Minuts yoga/d and 20 minuts meditation/d (for 90 days).You do a questionnaire (beginning and end) about quality of relationships, wellbeing in social interactions and general motivation.If the improvements of nofap group would compete with or even beat yoga or meditation, it would show first signs of real evidence? I m just curious and not educated as far as science is concerned... ^{— Unsigned, by: 109.143.59.56 / talk / contribs}

To me it would be incomplete. When it comes to masturbation, the studies seem to focus in a few areas:

A) The role of masturbation when it comes to your health (generally the papers are like this one and indicate positive effects) and mood (less papers exist here, but again they broadly indicate positive effects) in normal, healthy people.

B) The role of masturbation when it comes to *mood disorders*.

Many papers do link mood disorders (depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsion) to excessive masturbation and other exaggerated sexual habits already (see this one and this one. As masturbation is a normal part of human behavior, and a healthy one, the first thing to examine would be what the actual motivations of NoFap are.

Increasingly there is greater evidence of a need to include a new impulse control disorder, typically called compulsive sexual behavior disorder, in the standard list. NoFap seems to fail IMHO by treating what possibly might be a impulse control disorder as an "addiction", which it is not. I would actually argue that what NoFap's own web site describes as addiction is pretty much compulsive behavior disorder oriented stuff.

As such, the test would be whether or not an "abstinence" or "fast" from this compulsion resolves or mitigates the underlying problem, both short term and long term. So, from the above, a more complete survey would do a long-term follow up to see if such moods stick. I do suspect further tweaks are needed with more guidance from people in the psychological fields, I don't think comparisons are necessary per se, it would more be psychological evaluation (by definition a bit fuzzy, but there is such a thing as behavior science, and it would be up to the experts in this to design the best type of survey).

(Actually, in reality, NoFap is too specifically aligned to one particular compulsive disorder, and a better study might be to see whether self-abstinence periods from a broad array of compulsive disorderly behaviors improve the condition. Surprisingly, I couldn't find anything in Scholar on this.)

(Some of this article probably needs a bit of a clean up because while "porn addiction" is a falsehood, compulsive sexual behavior disorders are not as of current literature.) Soundwave106 (talk) 18:31, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

You'd probably get a lot better results by having one group do just no fap. One group jerking off to their hearts content but no yoga or related regular relaxation exercises. And another group jerking off AND doing yoga/relaxation exercises. Preferably more than just 300 in total. The test would have to be very well devised, with lots of controls and expertly handled interviews (by paper or not). Having said that...why would this experiment even be done? There's no preliminary evidence or any signs whatsoever that no-fap is useful at all. Just a small group of guys promising that it really really works...I'm totally serious! Denying your sexual urges to please yourself is healthy and beneficial! Take me seriously! ShabiDOO 18:45, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

If you are mentally healthy you can take all of their claims as broscience-y woo (as scientifically, there is nothing unhealthy with masturbation) You can also discount much of their claimed overall general "life improvements" as NoFappin' probably won't help any if you are mentally healthy.

If you are not mentally healthy and are compulsively jerking off to the point where it actually is a problem, this is where the question is.

To be honest, after this post, I thought of a much longer studied compulsive disorder, gambling. We already have a long-studied group (Gambler's Anonymous) that is basically a compulsion-reduction social group. The effectiveness is... um, not great per Wikipedia. Nonetheless, it doesn't seem as almost useless as something like Alcoholics Anonymous per a few papers.

At best I'd postulate NoFap being (like GA) as a social group that, if it fits your social archetype, may be helpful in reducing certain behavior, but is no substitute for proper treatment (for compulsive behavior, the current standard of choice would be cognitive behavior therapy). NoFap is rather limited, but if it fits the issue, fair ennough.

NoFap, however, has a lot of bad bullshit ideas attached to, and it would be *much* easier to take it more seriously if they wiped out a lot of the bad or simplistic pseudoscience on their web page (and there is a lot, expected when your whole premise -- a compulsive order is an addiction -- is wrong). Furthermore, the Reddit page on NoFap to me suggests that a lot of NoFappers have the same sort of pseudo-cultish devotion to this concept like you see in a lot of twelve step type programs, with a little too much of a "men going their own way" vibe in some posts. This is far from what I'd consider an idea discussion group to pair with CBT for someone concerned about compulsive masturbation. Soundwave106 (talk) 19:20, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

NoFap and the Victorians

How does the NoFap movement relate to eg Victorian era/latter part of the 19th century attitudes - eg [2] or [3] (look up the rest for yourselves - 'dead dove do not eat' warning) and the various 'devices and equipment' then on sale. Anna Livia (talk) 12:28, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

"Religious" guilt makes money. Fundie grifters selling "cures" to "sin" are gonna grift. A Google search reveals this connection towards the Victorian aesthetic was known even five years ago, even by the NoFap crowd themselves. Someone should re-start the oh-so-Victorian rumor that one must also follow the Kellogg adventist bullshit of eating bland foods like corn flakes in order to ward off the pleasures sins of masturbation and gain the benefits of... well, whatever bro-science claims the NoFap crowd are claiming this week! (s)(Oh garlic, oh pepper! You are of the devil!)(/s) Soundwave106 (talk) 13:06, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

NoFap and health issues mistakened to be due sexual energy depletion after orgasming (Post Orgasmic Illness Syndrome)

Some NoFap practicers might have some health imbalances whether hormonal or neurological or immune or allergenic for example like the Post Orgasmic Illness Syndrome which is likely underdiagnosed given the amounts of members on https://poiscenter.com/forums and the https://reddit.com/r/POIS and basically possibly due to an autoimmune response or allergy to the chemicals released during orgasming those people get fatigue, brain fog and other symptoms for a few days and in some cases longer and if one notices those symptoms but are not aware that such health disorders can cause them they might instead decide that since orgasming gives those symptoms then orgasming itself is bad when in reality it just activates some underlying health problems which is one of other causes that might make some preach NoFap because those benefits could be the symptoms just going away instead ^{— Unsigned, by: Journey101 / talk / contribs}

Not sure what you are saying here. Temp username (talk) 06:03, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

We really need more coverage on this topic

Seeing so much bad cases, especially many nut theories like "masturbation is only found in zoos and in matriarchal species. Naturally masturbation don't exist in wild".

Research paper

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01639625.2023.2280795

It says this was the most violent Reddit sub. Which surprised me. Chillpilled (talk) 11:17, 17 December 2023 (UTC)