“I thought it would be hard, but it wasn’t…”

Ho hum. There hasn’t been an update here in a while, but for the past 40 days, or the period of Lent, I have been on a challenge to abstain from masturbation, wanking, or whichever name you wanted to call it.  At the start of this mission, the task seemed quite daunting. I mean, a week is probably a long time by anyone standards but the challenge was for almost seven. I was bravely joined on the challenge by Gos, and after seeing his Xbox hard drive, would also have a hard time.

Gos advocated the use of a ‘wildcard’, which, in retrospect was a good move. I had to look the date up but I used it on the 23 Feb, which is a month ago. In my defence, I had to get up extremely early the next day and needed some sleep, but that is still a pretty crap excuse.

I’m quite glad I’m doing this at the end of it, reason being that there would be almost nothing to update in the duration. Imagine. Day 22, it was easy today. Day 23, almost did it today. So, a long one is the way. I should have actually made some notes on the way, but this is not a problem. I have had numerous conversations and emails with Gos that I can remember.

The actual experiment was not that difficult. The most difficult parts were probably the first week, as it’s probably routine for most people, or maybe something you do when you get bored. I’ve been pretty lucky in that respect that I have got a lot of work to do. After you get over that, and you send the message to your brain, then it’s pretty easy.

I suppose this all begs the question: why the hell do this in the first place? Well, the reason was to just find out what happens. Supposedly, a massive build-up of testosterone happens, and you increase strength and agressiveness. This is explained by the animal instinct in you telling you to basically go out and sow your seed. So, as a regular gym goer, I was attracted by the increase to improve performance.
There are also several schools of thought that suggest that an orgasm means mediocrity for the following day (following on from the animal theme) and that the unreleased ’sex energy’ gives you an edge (quoted from Napoleon Hill).

These advantages sounded good to me. Looking back on it, there were good improvements around Day 10 or so, but from then, it was all downhill. The last couple of weeks have seen actual losses in strength and endurance at the gym, and a definate shift in mood. There is a word for it, but I don’t know what it is. Melancholy? Maybe.

My own reasoning behind this, which is probably in no-way scientific, is that orgasm releases feel-good endorphins into the brain, and the lack of this over a period of time causes this effect. Maybe if I was doing something exciting every day, like bungee jumping, this effect would be alliviated but, I have no idea on this. I don’t wish to exaggerate the effects, because it isn’t that great. Let’s say that normal mode is 0, equilibrium. I would feel at maybe -25%. Which is still low for me. Maybe the last time I felt worse, was maybe breaking up with the ex, I’d put that at maybe -50%. Anything more is saved for the really bad stuff.

But the bad effect is that I haven’t had felt the need to go to the gym, which is strange for me. As a result, my diet has been poorer, which led to a corresponding weight loss of apprx. 3kg (bad) and strength loss. My excuse for not wanting to go was I felt weak, but in actual fact, my attitude towards it sucked. In past times, I have had a cold and still gone to work out. I am almost certain that all this will be rescinded once normality is resumed, I can feel it.

That’s not to say I might have done, I was considering it. Although there are certain things to consider, let us look at it like this: Is a man screwing two bad women, ultimately going to gather better women skills, than a man screwing none? Getting into a relationship is quite easy, but getting into a relationship with a woman that you really want appears to be more difficult for me. But maybe that’s me.

I didn’t really get that much out of this experiment, and you could actually say that I lost a lot more than I gained. It wasn’t hardcore, Nazi-style - I mean, you could still browse porn if you really wanted to - which I did a bit at the start, but gradually less and less. The amount of times I thought about it, ie, your mindset, probably went down slightly but not by that much. I suppose my expectations were a bit high, I imagined becoming a raging man like Gordon Ramsay but nothing happened like that. My own thoughts is that Gos would agree with me on a lot of these points, I don’t recall him whinging much about it, as I thought he might have done.

I probably could recommend it but my own gut feeling is that it is more effective on a shorter time scale.  Or, your brain might just work in a different way from mine, who knows.

The next challenge is coming up for April and promises to be harder and promise to deliver benefits on a major scale. I’ll post more if I can undertake it, not sure about it yet.