“The first time I didn’t masturbate for a week, I thought I might die.”

In 2011, Alexander Rhodes was browsing Reddit when he stumbled upon a thread about masturbation in the Today I Learned community. The thread linked to a study that read: “When men don’t ejaculate for seven days their serum testosterone levels increase by 45.7 percent.”

It’s a flashy title that beckons any user to click on it. You probably already did.

Curious to see if this was actually true, Rhodes, who was only 22-years-old at the time, made the ultimate sacrifice for science. He abstained from masturbation for a week. (…For science?)

Now, Rhodes was the type of guy who loved jerking off—or so he thought. Sometimes, he’d masturbate to Internet porn 10 times a day. Whenever the Pittsburgh, Penn. native felt the urge to choke his chicken in public (to put it politely), he’d rush to the bathroom to relieve the “itch.”

Back to that week that would—no joke—change his life:

“I had heart palpitations from not masturbating,” Rhodes tells Upvoted. “Any time I saw any piece of skin on a girl walking by, I felt like there might be a cardiac incident [laughs]. It was extraordinarily challenging.”

How NoFap was born.

While he didn’t measure his testosterone levels, Rhodes, a web developer, noticed some surprising outcomes of the experiment: increased focus, concentration, energy, and productivity. Rhodes decided to create the “NoFap” community on Reddit to document his results and to see if others reported the same.

Does that remind you of anything?

“I gained an energy that can be applied to every area of life. It is hard to explain in words,” he describes.

In a span of just four years, the community, which initially started out as a joke, grew from 50 participants to over 157,000 members today—a community rivaling small countries. They even have a name for themselves: “fapstroanuts.”

“I created NoFap as a forum to experiment with the idea of abstaining from orgasm for a period of time to just see what would happen,” the 26-year-old founder explains. “It was a bio-hacking experimental laboratory and I never expected it to reach more than 50 users.”

The brains of compulsive porn users.

Naturally, the community drew in people who were claiming to suffer from too much masturbation or porn addiction, becoming a much-needed support group for those who would normally not seek help if it wasn’t for the anonymity of the Internet.

And the community (with Rhodes as their leader) have, in fact, helped many people overcome what they believed to be serious addictions. Helping others change their lives for the better is something Rhodes is very passionate about.

NoFap has even helped the science community better understand addiction. In 2013, Rhodes says Cambridge University scientists actually reached out to members of NoFap to participate in a study about pornography use.

Interestingly, the study revealed that the brain activity of NoFap members (who were admitted compulsive porn users) was similar to the brain activity of alcohol and drug addicts—though the study didn’t mention if porn is inherently addictive in itself.

Which makes you wonder: Can watching too much porn actually cause your brain structure to change?

University of Nebraska, Lincoln assistant professor of psychology and neuroscientist, Matthew Johnson, tells Upvoted that he doesn’t believe watching porn can actually rewire your brain.

Instead, he says, it’s more likely that brain structure influences porn behavior—meaning compulsive porn users are probably predisposed to addiction.

In fact, case studies demonstrate that damage to the prefrontal cortex influences unusual sexual behavior—so it’s not a stretch to think people who have less volume in their prefrontal cortex would be more likely to beat their meat ’til, say, their hands bleed.

The alleged scientific benefits of not masturbating.

But around 40 percent of NoFap community members don’t consider themselves addicts at all. Neither did they join the community for religious or moral reasons (over 60 percent of members are atheist or agnostic, according to a survey Rhodes drafted).

Many users joined the movement simply in order to experience the alleged benefits of abstaining from masturbation.

Discussion after discussion, members claimed to gain confidence, focus, and energy from not “touching themselves.”

Some claimed it freed them from depression. Others reported being cured of ADHD.

And, even more miraculously, many claimed to attract more women (the majority of users are straight and male and around 44 percent are virgins). It all seemed like not masturbating was one of those all-too-convenient cure alls, much like the “doctors hate her” memes.

It even became somewhat of a joke on 4chan:

Now, if you think the claim about attracting more women sounds like bullshit, you’re not alone. Even a member of the NoFap community questioned why so many people were reporting this strange side effect:

“I know on Nofap we often speak of ‘more attention from females,’ ‘random girls keep staring at me at the gym (or work, or school, mall etc…),’ ‘got out the friend zone with a girl I’ve liked for years.’ … “Is it pheromones? Our increase in testosterone? The fact that we’re improving our lives so ppl in general just are more attracted to our ‘aura’? Or is it something else? Or is it a little of all the above? “If you’ve never been on a long streak or got into No Fap, it can be easy to call BS on the whole ‘attention we get from the opposite sex superpower.’ “Plus, we all know those guys who jerk off to porn everyday who seem to have no trouble getting whatever women they want… “So can quitting jerking off REALLY be a factor in getting attention from the ladies?”

Although the majority of members are not religious, are these reported benefits actually a placebo, a psychological consequence from masked guilt they felt over masturbating?

After all, up until a few decades ago, masturbation was demonized by society (and still is in some circles). Could these claims be a modern-day version of the ol’ hairy palm trope? Or do the reputed benefits have any scientific legitimacy?

What the neuroscientist says.

“I think there is probably a little value to the arguments of the bald-palmed members of NoFap. Most of them are probably taking it a bit too far, though,” says Johnson. “You could draw some good parallels between ‘dancing with yourself’ and drinking alcohol,” he continues. “I feel like there’s a pun here about ‘picking up a stiff one’…?”

Masturbation is normally healthy.

Johnson says that if one is not predisposed to addiction, in small doses, masturbation—like alcohol—can be a healthy way to “blow off a little steam.”

Masturbation provides tons of health benefits (like stress and tension relief). Of course, most of us know this already. Masturbation is fun. And so is alcohol.

And Rhodes agrees:

“I’m not an anti-masturbation zealot. I think I’ll masturbate at some point in my life. I’m not going to say [not masturbating] is for everybody… I think it can be healthy to masturbate… I’m not on a moral crusade to stop people from touching their penises.”

But if you do have an addictive personality, masturbating or drinking alcohol both have the potential to take over your life, Johnson says.

“Also, if you’re going to do either one all night, remember to drink some water to keep yourself hydrated,” Johnson jokes.

Are there actually any scientific benefits of not masturbating?

Johnson, who is also a co-host of The Super Science Happy Hour podcast with Matt and Matt, explains:

“If you find yourself ‘turning Japanese’ (I really think so) more often than you think is healthy and you explicitly forbid yourself from engaging that particular reward mechanism, one likely outcome is that you’ll devote more energy to pursuing other sources of reward. So in that sense, I can see the logic behind freeing up your time, attention, and Internet bandwidth for other pursuits.”

Johnson suspects people who overeat, overexercise, or engage in other impulsive behaviors, would report the same results—meaning those results are not obtained from quitting the act of masturbation itself.

Instead, it’s actually from kicking an addictive behavior—whether that behavior involves sexy time with yourself or doing something more mundane like watching TV.

If you’re not the type of person who suffers from obsessive-compulsive behaviors, then you probably wouldn’t gain any benefits from not masturbating.

Although he didn’t know it at the time he started the NoFap Reddit community, Rhodes himself says he suffered from a porn addiction. It got to the point where he would neglect all areas of his life to masturbate. He was not able to connect with sexual partners, seeing them as “tools” to achieve orgasm.

To make matters worse, Rhodes couldn’t maintain an erection with sexual partners if he didn’t fantasize about pornography.

“I can’t think of anything more embarrassing than losing an erection as a male under the age of 40,” he explains.

After he gave up watching porn, Rhodes says he no longer suffers from delayed ejaculation.

Can giving up masturbation cure ADHD (or make you more attractive)?

Remember the original study that started the whole movement in the first place? Johnson says that the life and behavioral changes reported by Rhodes and other fapstronauts are probably not due to a rise in testosterone.

As far as the bolder claims of curing ADHD or increasing attractiveness, Johnson has his doubts, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

“Perhaps abstaining from chicken-choking could be thought of as a form of self-imposed cognitive-behavioral therapy for training yourself to resist impulses, which could have some (limited) carry-over effects into learning to control your ADHD?” he theorizes.

As for the alleged “attracting more ladies” benefit, that could simply be a result of increased confidence gained from kicking a habit.

Is there any difference in how your brain reacts to masturbation over having sex?

Johnson explains:

“Orgasm produces an increase in oxytocin (frequently referred to as a bonding hormone). Oxytocin actually does a bunch of stuff in the brain, but it is indeed linked to pair bonding behavior in both humans and other animals. I haven’t seen any studies in particular on this, but it does raise the question of what you’re bonding to, if there isn’t another human being around…?”

Besides oxytocin, orgasm also produces the hormone prolactin. This is important because prolactin is hypothesized to be linked to greater sexual satisfaction.

Interestingly, Johnson points to a study which found greater increases in prolactin after sexual intercourse rather than masturbation.

However, scientists disputed the legitimacy of the study, questioning the researcher’s methods.

“Colleagues in the field told me that many of them ignore [the study’s author] because he makes wild inferences based on soft science and, as implied by his research, is wedded to the idea that for sex to have the most benefits it needs to include [penis-vagina-intercourse],” wrote sexual health expert Martha Kempner.

Johnson emphasizes that one of the biggest problems with investigating porn’s (and masturbation’s) effects on the brain is the dearth of scientific studies on the subject, which makes it difficult to draw any concrete conclusions at all.

In fact, a 2009 study that sought to examine porn’s effect on the brain was scrapped after researchers couldn’t find a single man in their 20s “who never consumed pornography.”

Seriously. Not a single one.

What do the critics say?

Just as you (hopefully) wouldn’t self-diagnosis yourself as a cancer patient after reading just WebMD, identifying yourself as a porn addict without understanding what that really means may lead to misdiagnosis.

In fact, psychologist David Ley, Ph.D., believes the label of “porn addict” itself may cause unnecessary feelings of shame—which may lead to depression.

In Psychology Today, Ley says:

“Analyses confirmed that the self-perception as a porn addict predicted distress one year later, where either porn use or personality characteristics did not. If someone believed they were a sex addict, this belief predicted downstream psychological suffering, no matter how much, or how little, porn they were actually using.”

And Johnson agrees:

“I don’t doubt that porn addiction exists in some people, because you can get addicted to just about anything you find rewarding….

“It does seem like a lot of people may be self-diagnosing as ‘porn addicts’ that don’t really fit an addiction profile, presumably due to a puritanical view of sexuality.”

Evolution gave us hands. To masturbate.

“Fortunately, evolution also gave us hands,” says Johnson. “Personally, my waifu pillow and I are very happy together (not really).“

Are there any scientific benefits associated with quitting masturbation (for the average person)? Not likely.

But if you do have a sexual addiction of some sorts, abstinence can lead to increased feelings of positivity, confidence, and energy—basically everything the NoFap community describes.

“Despite what Seinfeld would have us believe (the episode where George and Elaine are both abstaining, and it makes George smarter but Elaine dumber), I have never seen anything that suggests a significant effect on the brain beyond what we already know from everyday folk psychology (i.e., sexual frustration),” says Johnson

“Maybe it is a placebo,” Rhodes adds. “Regardless, we are experiencing something—I’m not hung up on the ‘why.’ I’m still going to continue forward… I support further research. … We’re still helping a ton of people around the world.”