Resources - Beat Death Grip

How to Cure Death Grip – The Plan

Anyone can cure Death Grip Syndrome (DGS) with a little discipline and a plan to hold themselves accountable to. Death Grip is a horrible curse that ends relationships, so let’s be clear that this is a worthwhile cause to summon your willpower to get through – because you will be going through significant dopamine withdrawals, especially at the beginning.

The below plan, simple as it is, is the product of numerous inputs and research. The following list sets out these building blocks for further reading:

Your brain is plastic – you can program and reprogram neural pathways
It’s not just about DGS – might only be a component of your problem

This plan has a fundamental hypothesis: you need to:

unwire the stimulation + arousal you historically needed to ejaculate, and
program yourself to ejaculate to natural stimulation + arousal with a lover.

The stimulation component will shift you away from the Death Grip of your hand toward something better replicating a vagina’s comparatively ‘warmer, wetter and looser’ sensation.

The arousal component requires a blanket boycott of all pornography, to help you level out to something more natural.

## Let us be more clear. Porn is a no no for the entire Plan ##

Step 1. Recruit your #1 supporter – your significant other

Purpose: To bring your significant other on board with your plan to cure Death Grip. It will make you more likely to see it through and it will take the pressure off. If you are struggling, she is the best person that can help.

What to do: Talk about this plan in detail – especially if you want to use a Fleshlight in Step 3. The last thing you want is for them to find it in your bedroom.

How to be successful: Read, digest and discuss some of the information on this website. Reading about the website author’s own journey has been effective with helping partners empathising with what a struggle this can be. Reading on brain plasticity and some of the other materials can help her understand you a bit more, as well.

Step 2. Get back to baseline

Purpose: regain sensitivity in the penis, allow any porn dependence to perish, and your libido to build.

What to do: watch no porn & perform no masturbation for 30 days. Easier said than done, but to cure Death Grip, you must first give your brain a chance to reset.

How to be successful:

Mark when the 30 days ends in a calendar.
Tell your partner what the date is.
Every time you feel an urge, do pushups
Start exercising regularly
Don’t put yourself in the situation where you used to masturbate – i.e. don’t take a phone to the bathroom / don’t take the laptop into the bedroom. Install a net nanny or the like.
Make a daily pledge to yourself to not look at porn. Avoiding porn is typically the hardest part.
Read the post on what to expect when you go through this process (sore balls, big urges, self bargaining to cheat etc).
Join our forum and vent any frustrations there.
Write a letter to yourself for when you do have an urge, to remind yourself of why you are doing this.
Remind yourself: discipline is remembering what you really want. Your body will rebel against you trying to break a X number of year old habit.

Step 3a. Retrain yourself – handheld

Purpose: To train yourself to reach orgasm from the ‘warmer, wetter, looser’ vagina-like sensation.

What to use: This website advocates the use of a Fleshlight for several reasons, but if you or your partner are uncomfortable with this, then a hand with lube can be used. However, to most reliably cure Death Grip, emphasis is really to divorce the association between your hand and penis to achieve your orgasm trigger

Regarding selection of a Fleshlight (there is a daunting rang), we advocate for models that best replicate the feeling of a vagina, and have the least exotic internal textures. You should see our recommendations here.

What to do: Use the following rhythm:

First two weeks (after your 30 day baselining): Masturbate with the Fleshlight handheld once per week. If you fail to climax, wait out the rest of the week.
Next two weeks: Masturbate with the Fleshlight handheld twice per week. If you fail to climax, still count it as part of the weekly tally.
After four weeks: Masturbate with the Fleshlight handheld as often as you like.

## When you have climaxed four times with the Fleshlight – go to Step 3b ##

How to be successful with Step 3a:

Take your time. Try to set aside at least 40 minutes each time to not rush. This will be a learning experience.
Do warm up the Fleshlight, through either putting it in a sink of hot water, leaving it in front of a heater or buying a warmer. The more you can do to simulate the real thing, the better. (Warmers are available, which greatly simplify this whole experience.)
Go slow. Don’t expect that you will be able to replicate the speed you used to use your hand with the Fleshlight. If you do, you will probably chafe yourself as you run out of lube. Experiment with what feels good, including what setting on the Fleshlight’s suction cap feels the best.
Expect to get really frustrated. You are retraining yourself to enjoy the sensation and find your orgasm trigger from something new. But this will be like reaching out blindly in a dark room. You won’t know what to look for. However, frustration in the form of really wanting to cum is a good thing. It means your libido is working and your mind is searching for a way to connect to the sensations you are feeling to fire your orgasm trigger, and you are on your journey to cure Death Grip.
It’s ok to let your mind wander into fantasy at the start. Over time, you will become more attuned to the feeling that makes your orgasm, versus relying on a particularly elevated level of arousal to get you there.
One trick that might help break the ice the first time – imagine being with your partner and include another stranger in the mix. Fantasy of your partner and another is a surprisingly potent arousal cocktail that apparently applies universally.

Step 3b. Retrain yourself – hands free

What to do: Switch to the ‘hands free shower mount’ to thrust into the Fleshlight, versus using your hand to operate it. Adopt the following rhythm:

First week: take a break. Let your libido build up again to help with the coming shift.
Next two weeks: Once each week, you can masturbate by thrusting into the Fleshlight as its held steady by the shower mount.
Next two weeks: You can have two thrusting sessions each week.
After four weeks: You can have as many thrusting masturbation sessions as you like, but don’t revert to handheld.

## When you have climaxed four times into the Fleshlight from thrusting sessions, you are ready to move onto Step 4 ##

How to be successful at Step 3b:

We advise you don’t do this in the shower, to better replicate normal intercourse.
The shower mount fits well against flat surfaces like walls, bedside tables, dressers etc.
It’s fine to hold the Fleshlight as you thrust, as long as you are thrusting. The key is to build the orgasm trigger to fire while you are working hard with your hips, and building the neural pathways between hip thrusting and orgasm.
Expect to go through the frustration stage all over again, but keep at it. This is the final physiological barrier to the holy grail of normal, satisfying, giggle-inducing sex.

Step 4. Tentative re-wiring complete

You are ready to give the real thing a go!

If you have moved through the plan to date, you have had at least eight orgasms simulating what a vagina feels like, four of which also replicated the movements of sex. Additionally, you have abstained from porn, restoring you arousal levels back to a more natural setting.

The only theoretical change with real sex is now adding the dynamic between you and your lover. Don’t be disheartened if the first time doesn’t work, especially as there will naturally be a little pressure from the build up. But your arousal from having the real thing in front of you should be much higher than your solo sessions. We have heard that doing it twice in one night is often successful, as the first time has all sorts of anxiety related to it (from both sides); whereas the second time many of those nerves have dissolved. Remember, time and touch builds intimacy. If you haven’t been touching your lover much recently, it might take some time to build up your connection again.

It didn’t work…

If you were fine with getting through Step 3, but Step 4 didn’t work, it may speak more toward a dynamic between you and your lover, versus problems held within the bounds of Death Grip or Delayed Ejaculation itself.

If you don’t have success from ten couplings, despite being able to comfortably orgasm with a thrusting Fleshlight, raise the disappointment with your lover and acknowledge it. Surfacing it may invoke a courageous conversation that you both need to address anything between you.

The next thing I would try is putting the Fleshlight away and giving it a good three weeks of no masturbation, to see if an elevated libido helps.

If this pause of masturbation doesn’t help, and communication isn’t an issue, it might be time to turn toward professional help, especially if your communication with each other is really transparent.

Step 5. Ongoing vigilance

To cure Death Grip for good, you will have to abstain from ongoing dry hand masturbation, and unfortunately what we have found is that it will come back if given the chance.

Now that you have won yourself normal sex with you lover, guard that privilege, by:

Seriously thinking if you want to consume porn again, if ever, now that you have had an extended period free from it. From our talks with others that have suffered DE as well as our own experiences, we strongly advise that porn doesn’t re-enter your life.
Never resorting to hand masturbation again. Your body will re-embrace the old mental pathway again in an instant.
Always using lube at a minimum for any future masturbation.

Were you successful?

We want to know! Tell us about your journey to date. We need all the success stories we can get to help others find their way out of this cursed labyrinth. You can read about the author’s success story here. Equally, we want to hear from anyone still struggling. The more we know, the better. Hopefully this can become a safe space where others like us can come and have a real exchange.

Start your journey now and get your Fleshlight by reading here.

We wish you all the best!
The Beat Death Grip Team

How I Cured Delayed Ejaculation

How I came to cure Delayed Ejaculation is a bit of a story, but you can skip to our recommended plan to replicate this success here. I had been a Delayed Ejaculation sufferer, including Death Grip Syndrome, for all my sexual life. For any who are interested, here is my story – warts and all.

I started masturbating young

I was in year 7, or 12 years old. The internet had just been installed in the house via a 56k dial up modem. I can still act out the noise it made when connecting. The family computer was in my room, so it was all too easy. I went to an all male school, and masturbation talk was common. So it wasn’t any surprise I started soon after starting high school, where it became a daily habit with a dry hand while watching whatever porn I could find.

I first encountered Delayed Ejaculation when I was 17

She was the prettiest girl in school. A six foot blonde bombshell with a D cup bust, long blonde hair down to her waist, and a dirty mind. We were both virgins, and I still remember the day that I picked her up to bring her to my parent’s house. Her cheeks flushed a slight pink as I lifted her school dress off, revealing the black, lacy lingerie she had worn in expectation of, well, having her adonis ravish her.

Of course, we already know how this encounter ends. I actually couldn’t get hard at all, despite the naked Venus lying willingly in front of me. She tried everything. I tried everything. All to no avail. I got her off, repeatedly, but we both knew there was a wrongness to the whole experience. This wasn’t supposed to happen. We put it down to nerves and decided it was an off day.

But it wasn’t just an off day. While I could soon get an erection with her, she would jerk away, or suck away, or I would hump away, all without me getting remotely close to ejaculating.

Initially, she thought it was great – all of the worry and hype about premature ejaculation (in those days, the ads about nasal spray to help premature ejaculation were all over the radio), and here I was; some sort of sexual marathon runner that could go for 30 minutes straight with pelvis slapping intensity. I would replicate the many scenes of porn I had watched, moving through all the positions in a single session and thinking this was what great sex amounted to. The truth of this was that I felt my muscles aching from all these impressive moves more than any pleasure coming from my penis. And I spent every encounter firmly planted in my own head.

Eventually, neither of us could ignore the reality any longer. Despite my fervent attraction to her, the inability to cum sapped away at her self esteem. She began to feel like I wasn’t actually attracted to her. Or there was something broken in her vagina… Like there was something wrong with her.

Looking back, I was a tough gig for a girl to have as her first lover. Women place a huge emphasis on being desired – there are psychologists that argue this need to be desired forms the cornerstone of their own lust. That is, lust for women is reciprocal – desiring them with passion evokes a returned passion. They want to be ‘taken’ by a man overcome with need for them.

Hence, failing to finish the act after pumping away, no matter how many orgasms she might enjoy, was ultimately a breach of the male-female contract. Of the very duality upon which everything in a relationship revolves around–the polarity between masculine and feminine.

Perhaps that isn’t politically correct, but sexuality isn’t. No matter what I said, at a primal level between us, something was amiss. An elephant in the room neither of us could move along.

She was the first of many girls I couldn’t perform with. It is easy to see the patterns now, but I didn’t ever do anything to address them. Relationships were brief for me for my late teens and early twenties. All of the women were supportive for the first couple of times when I couldn’t get hard, and became thrilled when I did become hard for them. The elephant would always return though, as each woman eventually started carrying around an impossible guilt for not being able to make me ejaculate. All of them would lean into the problem, work hard and remain optimistic. But no matter their looks, their acts or their perseverance, nothing worked to get me over the line.

In those days, my searches on the internet didn’t uncover much about what I was going through. I couldn’t just type in ‘Cure Delayed Ejaculation’ like you can now. I did go to my Doctor, who simply dismissed my condition as ‘needing to be more selfish’ during sex, and ‘make sure you are using the right visuals’. In short, I was given advice to focus more on fantasy, which in retrospect I believe was bad advice. All I really knew was that only one thing worked to make me cum: my own hand. And then only when my penis and hand were both dry. This stayed a mostly daily practice, with video porn streaming sites becoming a ritual.

The first big change then happened

The first big change for me happened after I met a special girl some years later. I knew I was going to marry her after our third date, and I was spurred into action on to fix myself again. My searches then surfaced a few ‘Cure Delayed Ejaculation’ paywall sites that recommended masturbating and ejaculating at the last moment into your partner’s desired orifice. Again, in retrospect, I don’t think this really was suitable to cure Delayed Ejaculation. The best kernel of information actually came from a meme that had been posted on Imgur (or something like it) involving someone sharing their misery openly about trying to cure Delayed Ejaculation.

There, buried in the comments way down the thread, was my easter egg. The answer read: “Just stop masturbating. Worked for me”.

It didn’t provide an answer why, but I was keen on trying anything. So I did just that. I deployed to Afghanistan with the military for 6 months, and used the deployment to rid myself of porn and masturbation completely. Well – that was the plan. In truth I masturbated every two weeks or so, just to get some stress relief from the frontline operations, but there were three things that I was actually doing:

Stopping consumption of porn completely for a very long time
Stopped the frequency of masturbation
Had to learn to achieve orgasm with lighter hand movements due to my shared accomodation situation (8 people crammed into a little room with not much privacy).

When I returned home and saw the special girl, we had four sex sessions over a few days before we had enough privacy to have three back to back sex sessions one evening. On the third sequential session, I was pumping away slowly and honestly feeling pretty tired, when she lifted her legs up straight, probably to stretch them. I turned my head from the missionary position to look at the legs, appreciating how sexy she was. Now, I’m not a guy with a thing for feet or legs, per se, but all of a sudden, I felt a new sensation building in my penis and at the base of my balls. A sensation I knew meant one thing. I held my focus on how her legs looked and kept my strokes long and even, feeling the sensation build, until I went past the point of no return.

“I’m going to cum” I whispered urgently into my special girl’s ear, and she moaned with something between relief, happiness and desire, wrapping her legs around me as she did so.

I thundered into her, feeling for the first time the bliss of a vaginally induced orgasm, and a satisfaction of emptying myself into her that felt right.

I was 26 years old, and had never felt it before. It triggered something between her and I. A hope. Had I done it? Found the cure for Delayed Ejaculation?

“I dreamt about babies” she told me the next day as we walked down the street. Then she said something that encapsulated everything with hard-hitting truth. “It was because of you. Because now you can… you know… put them in me.”

I cured Delayed Ejaculation!.. Temporarily

The next day we had sex again, but I couldn’t get there.

But I did again the next day. And the next.

For the next two weeks, I had the privilege of experiencing normal sex. One day I managed to finish twice in one day, even working through the ‘sensation noise’ of a cramp in my hip for the second time.

And so I went back to masturbating, thinking I had turned a corner for good and fixed myself. Sure enough, the ability to ejaculate from sex disappeared immediately.

I had a mishmash of being successful and not over the next few years, right up until we got married and it became real baby making time. That will light the fire under you to eradicate DE, and is where I suspect most of those reading this are currently at.

I found the cure for Delayed Ejaculation again… Temporarily.

I put myself on a strict no porn, no masturbation regime for a month, seeking to emulate what I had done with my military deployment.

It was a difficult thing to do, especially in the first two weeks.

The truth was, I didn’t want to stop looking at porn.

I didn’t want to stop seeing what impossibly beautiful and sexy women looked like nude, or indulge that part of me that wanted to see slutty acts. I would have cravings to incognito google porn, even though I mentally knew I wouldn’t masturbate. It is at that point that you start really thinking about whether porn can form an addiction.

I also had become dependent on masturbation as a form of stress relief. Whenever I hit a mental block doing a university assignment or wanted to ‘unclench my brain’, I relied on masturbation to give me that relief, always keeping it hidden from my wife.

In any case, wanting to impregnate your wife is a very powerful motivator, so I held strong. I was able to climax during intercourse with her, and from that single session she conceived – meaning we were very, very, very, very lucky.

Pregnancy and life with a newborn is not the best time for regular sex with your partner, and so I turned to masturbation again. And with that, forfeited my ability to ejacualate with my wife.

There had to be a better way. So I searched again for a more permanent solution…

To cure Delayed Ejaculation, I:

completed two courses of hypnotherapy with two different hypnotherapists ($$$$$),
completed a tantra course,
abstained for nine months from masturbation and porn completely, and
refused to touch my penis with my right hand, even while going to the toilet.

It was my effort to completely reset any neural pathways I depended on to achieve orgasm. What do I mean by that? I read significant amounts of research pointing to how the brain is plastic (brain plasticity), and we can program ourselves with rewards or punishments. In short – I believed I had coached my brain to only fire an orgasm trigger when certain conditions were met, that being:

I was watching porn that turned me on (Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction),
I was masurbating in a certain way (Death Grip Syndrome), and
I had internalised the porn into a mental fantasy (some sort of fantasy dependent psychological trigger – or rather it wasn’t just the porn that aroused me, I mentally applied the scenario to me).

My hypothesis was that it was impossible to trigger an orgasm with my wife’s vagina when I had hard coded myself to orgasm with my usual masturbation routine, which was reinforced hundreds of times over.

So – after my wife finished breastfeeding our second child, and we were ready to get jiggy with it again, I had never been more confident that I would finally be raring to go.

But it didn’t work.

I was gutted. I had risen to a new level of self discipline to hold strong to my regime, and had been unable to talk to anyone about it aside from my wife. And it was all for nothing. It seemed my month long hiatus from porn and masturbation was no longer enough to get me over the line to cure Delayed Ejaculation.

So I decided that abstaining was not enough. I needed to go further to replicate the feelings of sex. Instead of letting my pre-programming perish to a neutral state, I had to program in ‘this feels like vagina = ejaculate’ pathways.

Really, my new hypothesis revolved around a belief that I had to learn how to cum from something ‘warm and wet’ versus dry, rough and idiosyncratic (or particular). This was driven from my realisation that I came more from the actions I was doing while masturbating than the actual feeling I felt along my penis.

It was at this point that I sat my wife down and had a courageous conversation. I asked her permission to buy a sex toy, specifically a fleshlight. She is a highly conservative woman, and toys had never been part of our highly traditional intimacy repertoire. It was based on my research into reviews of what felt the most like the real thing, and the Fleshlight came out on top after I did my best to statistically synthesise wildly subjective reviews. A big pro was that it came with a ‘shower hand-free kit’, which works perfectly to learn to ejaculate while thrusting hands free, not only in the shower.

Still being a guy that couldn’t masturbate successfully with lube, the Fleshlight took that one step further in removing the hand component altogether, which I thought important given the brain plasticity argument.

I got the wife’s okay. “If it will help, then of course.” She was actually relieved she didn’t have to be involved in the experiments.

Finally – something that was a permanent solution to Death Grip Syndrome & its associated problems

I have put the routine I used to beat Death Grip with the Fleshlight here, as well as help with which model to buy, but the short of it was it took me a good month of trying once or twice per week with it being handheld before I finished for the first time. There was definitely a learning curve, but it was a huge relief. After finishing for the first time, it was like something clicked in my head, and it became steadily more reliable to make me finish.

Then came transferring the success to the hands free holder, and thrusting for the entire time. There was another learning curve, but after five failed sessions, the sixth worked. Then the ninth. Then the tenth. Again, I slowly trained myself to climax, with something warm and wet, without using my hands and without the use of porn.

Bringing the learning back to my marriage bed, we were delighted to find that I was successful more times than not, almost right away.

It’s still the best feeling, and one which I’ll never take for granted.

I believe it’s part of the contract of desire between a man and a woman. And for the times when I need to relieve myself and the wife isn’t up for intercourse (we are having lots of kids), then it provides a way that I can masturbate without regressing any ability to naturally climax.

Death Grip Syndrome was only one of my problems…

For me personally, here is how I breakdown my own Delayed Ejaculation:

The Fleshlight only addressed the Death Grip Syndrome I had. The porn addiction I addressed through swearing off it. The other psychological noise I addressed through:

Not needing new partners 😛
Addressing the failure to ejaculate with my wife head on
Having courageous conversations about the realities of my desire for my wife versus what my body was trained to do, and how I could still enjoyed our intimacy even if I couldn’t finish.

Cure Death Grip Syndrome with a Fleshlight

Death Grip Syndrome can be cured with a Fleshlight. And a little discipline. If you have read our Action Plan on beating Death Grip, you will know we advocate the use of a Fleshlight to cure Death Grip Syndrome, how to use it and why Death Grip Syndrome occurs in the first place.

Why use a Fleshlight to cure Death Grip Syndrome?

Because:

It is one of the best toys to mirror what a vagina feels like – “Warm, wet, loose” relative to your hand.

It comes with a extremely versatile hands free mount, called the ‘shower mount’ but usable virtually anywhere. This is key to achieving a complete hands-free orgasm rewiring.

Fleshlights come in lifelike versions and non-lifelike versions. If one feels the vagina looking models are inappropriate, there are less human looking variants, like the Flight models.
Fleshlights are available worldwide, with distributors in most major countries, and if you buy from Fleshlight.com (not some local store selling cheaper made counterfeits-see below) you’ll have a well-made tool that won’t perish for years.

So, which Fleshlight should I buy?

So I used to recommend the Lotus, Mini Lotus, and Pink Lady.

(EDIT: some of this website’s visitors have written in told me about their frustrations with learning to climax with a Fleshlight–in this case I’ve been recommending getting the Vibro Lady to make the transition a little easier [and in extreme cases, you could check out the Vavoom Pack, which is actually a pretty economical deal and, I can tell you, mimics a blowjob pretty well]. Learning to climax from something slow, warm and wet, instead of fast, dry and edge-fantasy filled can be hard! The Vibro Lady is great because it isn’t too ‘exotic’, and you can progress to more natural by turning the vibrations off.)

By lifelike, we mean the most similar to a vagina, and typically least exotic. The point here is to be able to climax with your lover, not learn to orgasm with something more intense than a vagina. Let me put it another way – you don’t want to buy the Stoya Destroya!The Lotus and Mini Lotus have been discontinued, but you can still get the Mini Lotus (at the time of writing) as a sleeve (doesn’t come with the case – this needs to be purchased separately – see below). One must also buy the case separately. So, here are our suggestions:

>> Option 1: Pink Lady (or Vibro Lady) + Shower Mount + lube
The Pink Lady was the first Fleshlight and is also the most simple. It just has a smooth funnel beyond the lips. In our opinion, it is most like the real thing and our number one recommendation. You will want to buy:
+ The Pink Lady Classic (or Vibro Lady);
+ The Shower Mount to break your hand-penis brain wiring; and
+ Some water-based lube (doesn’t matter where from, just make sure it isn’t silicon based)

>> Option 2: Mini-Lotus sleeve + Case + Shower Mount + lube
The Mini-Lotus sleeve was designed to feel most like a vagina; however, after reading many reviews, it appears to offer more stimulation than the Pink Lady. As such, the Mini Lotus remains our second recommendation, and the combination of sleeve + buying the case separately tends to make it more expensive.
For this option, you will want to buy:
+ The Mini-Lotus Sleeve;
+ An empty Fleshlight Case;
+ The Shower Mount; and
+ Some water-based lube

I found Fleshlights available online from a local store…

I got to chatting to a guy who was 27 and trying to follow the Fleshlight plan I outlined on this website, and he was complaining about how the Fleshlight got mouldy within a week, and lost its tightness. After confirming he did the right cleaning things (wash clean under a tap with warm water, dry and apply the powder to keep the super skin product in good condition), I was curious so asked him to send photos. Surprisingly, the Fleshlight was clearly not the same as the one I received from Fleshlight.com, so I did some digging and realised that because Fleshlight have done so well, there are counterfeit Fleshlights on the market, and apparently being stocked by reputable adult toy distributors (everyone is vulnerable to being scammed, I guess).

This was in the United States.

My advice: buy from Fleshlight.com. You know you’ll get the real thing (which should last years, if you need it too). They have distribution houses in all the top countries, and it might save you the hassle (and annoyance) at receiving something that isn’t going to help you fix your sex life.

Hmm… I don’t want something so… human.

Many men (and their partners) have written in about being uncomfortable with using something graphically lifelike. Completely understandable, and you should look at the Flight options. These Fleshlights are not as long, being designed for travel, but most importantly have less lifelike aesthetics. There are a few options in this range, but we are recommending the Flight Aviator, as it is the less intense model.

But I’m gay – I want something more human, but less female

Adding this in after I was emailed a bunch of times by gay men looking to cure this same curse. Well, I went back to the Fleshlight site and they have a bunch of Fleshlights (called FleshJacks) now available specifically designed for men. You can should find them all here.

Don’t forget the lube

This is the most important part. If you have Death Grip Syndrome, you probably haven’t used too much lube in your life when it comes to masturbation. The lube that comes with the Fleshlight is fine, but all you need is water based lube (not silicon based, which will destroy the toy).

This can all end up being a bit expensive

Which was my thoughts exactly when I started down this path. Sometimes you can get value deals – I got my Pink Lady Classic plus lube plus the Shower Mount (and the renewal powder + antibacterial cleaner, which I’m not sure if you actually need) in a package deal that was quite doable. There is actually a deals page you should check in on here to see if there is an opportunity to save some money.

The other thing to ask yourself is this:

What would you pay to be cured of Delayed Ejaculation?

I spent $1,700 just on Hypnotherapy sessions. I spent untold hours reading research and combing through forums to try and find a workable, long-term path. I lost too much time not being happy and having regular sex.

But there is no silver bullet. All you can do is unwire and rewire your brain through a long and strict process. Breaking sometimes multiple decade long habits, and teaching yourself to climax with the feelings nature intended.

Did a Fleshlight cure your Death Grip Syndrome?

I want to hear from you! Contact me to share your story at argon.experimental@gmail.com. I would love to host your story so you can help inspire others or even get the message out there that they are not alone.

Many have emailed me directly, sharing your stories, your misery, determination to fix your love lives, and success.

Email me if you need to share your story!

“My Husband had PIED and I didn’t know for years”

I’m including a snippet below then a link to an excellent article written by Anna Good, because it gives death grip / PIED sufferers a very clear and compelling insight into what our condition can do to a relationship from the significant other’s perspective. If you are on this website, then you should read it. If you’re ready to do something about this, read our Action Plan or my own journey on how I cured it.

“The first time I had sex with my husband, he didn’t come.

I found out much later that this was standard for him — for most of his sex life, he got hard, but then lost it halfway through. As our relationship got serious, the sex got better, but it never seemed to feel like it should for me. Even when we were two young honeymooners with no kids and tons of time, we didn’t do it as often as I wanted. There were still times he didn’t come. He blamed it on dehydration, alcohol, work stress, lack of sleep, or worrying about my orgasm.

After a couple of kids and no time, inevitably we did it even less. He rarely asked for it. And if I asked for it, it was a crapshoot whether he would be into it. The timing had to be just right — he had to be well rested, not too drunk, not too full, not too busy. I told myself he probably had a low sex drive, and took what I could get.

Over the years, I only found porn a handful of times. He was crazy good at hiding it. But there was still a nagging feeling, a block in our sex life that I couldn’t figure out. Once we were laughing about the infamous Seinfeld masturbation episode, and I jokingly asked him how many times he jerked off per week. He looked uncomfortable, and admitted to 4-5 times per week. I was stunned. I of course wondered: How does he have the energy to jerk off that much but have no energy for me?

One day during an Internet research deep-dive into relationship and sexual issues, I read an article on porn addiction and porn-induced erectile dysfunction. In that moment, even without a lot of proof, I knew.

I told him about the article. To my shock, he told me that he’d long suspected he was addicted to porn, and that he used it most days of the week as a way to cope. He said he’d tried to kick it over the years, but couldn’t seem to, and he wanted to stop once and for all, with me and for me.

Now that I understood more of the extent of his relationship with porn, I felt terrified, betrayed, kind of horrified, but timidly hopeful. After he first quit, he said he felt empty and blank and wasn’t interested in sex. This, I found out, is a common response to quitting porn. But in the months that followed, he changed physically. He got harder than he ever had, and he came quickly and way more easily. He wanted sex more often. I told him how different his body seemed since quitting porn, and I think he was glad, but I also think it was extremely painful for him to realize the damage porn had done not just to our relationship, but to all of his past relationships and ultimately, of course, to himself. …”

Time to change?

Seize your destiny and change course. Start the Beat Death Grip Action Plan

Reflections on a relationship ruining habit

Blurred edges and a cloudy ideal,
With intangible thematic and numbed feel.
Something’s here, something lined with wrong
A distant voice. Faint yet Strong.

Something that matters and is built on high
my perspective of others that soar and fly.
Luck and pathways and innate ambitions.
Crystalised moments of stony decisions.

A glass ceiling and a burning sun
Clay wings and a smoking gun
But the rays are mental, the ground crowded
And everyone’s quiet. Why has no one shouted?

A wheel rolls and comes around.
Enough time for It to be found?
Faster and larger the cycle becomes,
With fewer and faster beats from the drums.

Tighter and tighter the coil turns
Amazing my mind learns and learns.
Fewer beats and a depleted well
Time to dig. Morals to sell.

Blurry is comfort. Cloudy is secure.
Keep safe from that inner lure.
That dangerous voice lurking deep inside
That thing from which you constantly hide.

I am careful approximation.
Non-defined. Little specification.
I hope I never find that voice
Surfacing confrontational choice.

Senses dulled and eyes dimmed
Colour neutral and claws trimmed.
Slack your thirst on diminishing returns.
Don’t stop or else it burns.

Meanwhile those brave few
Flying on wings fashioned from glue
All the luck, everything’s their way.
I read 5% of what they say.

But I’m content, I’ve learned to adjust
My expectations, my trust and lust.
And I’m healthy, just ask the crowd.

Just don’t ask 10 year old me
If I’m proud.

Next steps:

a. Get started fixing yourself; or

b. Read more about the author’s own journey.

What is Death Grip Syndrome?

Many are asking ‘what is Death Grip Syndrome?’. We see it pop up on reddit, quora, in health journals and in letters to editors of magazines & online print. Many who respond in the public lens are uneducated on what Death Grip Syndrome actually is. Why? Because Death Grip Syndrome is still poorly understood, and many claim that it is not recognised within the peer-reviewed medical community, and therefore it cannot exist.

If you are reading this, you know that is bullshit. “Try another position”, “get out of your own head”, “get the proper visuals in your head”, “get more turned on”, “just make do finishing with your hand” and the like are not the final solution. Natural, happy, giggle inducing sex that leaves you and your partner happily satisfied is your birthright. And there is a path to getting there.

Go straight to the Cure Death Grip Plan

Death Grip Syndrome is characterised by:

An inability to masturbate with lubricant or with a sex toy;
A reliance on a particular hand motion (often dry) to achieve ejaculation; and
Often accompanied by a dependency on fantasy or pornography to achieve the arousal needed to climax.

You are probably reading this because you, or your partner, are unable to have ‘successful’ sex. By that, I mean the male in the party is unable to ejaculate through intercourse, or by any other method that isn’t manual masterbation. This is a horrible situation to be in, and can lead to problems with your sex life, low self esteem for you and your partner, and even the eventual failure of your relationships. I know. I’ve been there, too.

So, what is Death Grip Syndrome?

‘Death Grip’ is a term used to describe the hypothesised causal link between the grip used to masturbate and the [stimulation + arousal] that triggers the [orgasm + ejaculation] response. While the term is gaining prominence in psychology as it seemingly becomes more common, it typically is nested below the umbrella condition of ‘Delayed Ejaculation’ – meaning a requirement for significant stimulation to ejaculate, or not being able to ejaculate at all.

Can the grip of your hand really impact your ability to orgasm with others?

Unfortunately, for what seems like a small subset of the male population (including me), yes. Why is this the case for some and not others? We don’t currently know.

How do I know if I have Death Grip?

One easy test is to ask yourself this: can you ejaculate when masturbating using lube?

If you cannot, chances are you have isolated the potential causes of unsuccessful ejaculation down to Death Grip.

The good news here – this is curable WITHOUT medical help / $100 psychology books / drugs / a life changing intervention / a tibetan pilgrimage finding the lost prayer scrolls of the long forgotten velociraptor sultan.

But it’s not just about Death Grip…

It is important to state here that Death Grip Syndrome is, somewhat mistakenly, becoming a catch-all term for other potential causes of Delayed Ejaculation. This is especially true on some subreddits. Here are some of the other potential causes:

physiological causes of Erectile Dysfunction (hormones, nerve damage etc.);
Pornography Induced Erectile Dysfunction (PIED) (potentially related to DGS);
psychological causes (trust issues, fantasy dependence, poor mindfulness), and
medication causes (antidepressants).

For my own Delayed Ejaculation, here is what I self diagnosed with:

This website will seek to provide the latest information on most of the above causes, but disclaim clearly where general advice should cease and specialist advice be sought.

However, no matter what the ultimate cause of your Delayed Ejaculation problem, the DGS Community offers information and an anonymous forum to help:

Learn about what is stopping your birthright to have great sex and relationships.
Implement tried and tested strategies to fix yourself.
Support others on their journey (everything takes willpower).
Reclaim your masculinity, and delight your partners with sexually realised desire.

Who am I to talk? I’m a recovered DGS sufferer. You can read more about my own journey and what worked for me here. I have battled this condition for 13 years and only recently conquered it.

What should I do next?

If you are suffering from Death Grip, Delayed Ejaculation or Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction, you should read our action plan to understand what is needed to address these conditions.

References:
Yourbrainonporn – one of the few places you can go and find dedicated research on the link between your brain, your penis, your ejaculation threshold, porn and masturbation.

Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction (PIED) – Do I have it?

Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction (PIED) is a relatively new term in the medical world, and one that appears to be quite controversial. In our review of the available evidence out there, it rings true with all other controversial issues by having peer reviewed research both for and against its existence. So we will go so far as to assert the following:

if you are struggling to maintain a healthy sexual relationship with your partner, porn consumption may very well be a factor. Steps to ‘rewire’ your brain are simple to do, but it involves breaking an addiction.

Of the research asserting porn induced erectile dysfunction is a thing, the research tells us brains consume porn just like any other addiction; in fact, it may be worse than that – our natural brain function and reward circuitry are actually geared to turn us into porn junkies. The best source we have found discussing this possibility, and therefore derive the steps one can take to mitigate this as a potential blocker to a normal, sex filled life, is from the youbrainonporn webisite. We will be drawing from this site’s research to provide a quick synthesis of what could be happening in your brain, and how to address it.

Skip to curing PIED and Death Grip

But first:

Do I have Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction (PIED)?

The best way to answer this is to ask yourself some of the following questions

Can you orgasm with a real life partner without the use of porn?

Another question to ask is:

Can you get an erection and ejaculate without the use of any porn?

If the answer is no to either or both of these questions, porn may have become more of a dependency than a recreational viewing activity.

I may have PIED… What is going on with my brain?

First, you are programmed to want new women all the time (Coolridge Effect)

Essentially, we are programmed to spread our genes far and wide. That means we have a preference for new sexual partners instead of the same partners we have already been with. This is called the Coolridge Effect, and is best illustrated by a male rat in a lab with 5 other females. The male will quickly mate with all of the females, but will then slow down in sexual activity. This is because for repeated mating with the same females, less and less dopamine will be released into the brain’s reward circuitry. But, introduce a new female, and the male will practically pounce on them with renewed vigor, and be rewarded with a big dopamine load.

So what? We don’t exactly each have a harem of women to sleep with. But porn streaming sites do offer an endless supply of new, perfectly proportioned and lusty women ready for your consuming pleasure, just like your own harem. This constant ability to ‘keep scrolling’ releases pleasure hormones in our brain, telling it that we’re kings of the world copulating with so many prime females. It makes it hard to stop, especially when your flywheel of new women being consumed each week is high, and another dopamine hit is ‘just a click away’.

As yourbrainonporn states – “novelty, novelty, more novelty.”

Second, your brain is malleable (brain plasticity), and can be hard wired to need porn

We are naturally driven by dopamine – the brain rewards us with it when we do something that should be reinforced. Like eating good food or defeating an adversary. If we repeat something over and over again, and get the dopamine hit, we actually wire our brains a certain way. This is particularly true in our formative adolescence, such as when you are a thirteen year old masturbating daily. Research indicates that this may even shift your orgasm trigger to becoming completely ‘master-hand stroking plus visual of X actions happening’ reliant.

The fear is that if this is established very early, such as very early in puberty, it could have a profound impact on one’s ability to function normally. Also, it turns out that we are at the height of our dopamine production, and therefore malleability, when we are a teen.

The good news here is that the brain is malleable. Wasn’t that the bad news? Well yes, and no. Just as you *may* have learnt to orgasm only under strict, specific criteria, you can also unlearn this as well. How? See below.

Third, video porn is far more arousing than images

“Porn has been around for generations” I hear you cry. “Where are the PIED cases from them?”

Well, it turns out that video porn is exceptionally more arousing than plain images. But you already know this. When was the last time you elected to look at a static image website for masturbation instead of a video streaming website?

It’s also possible to skip to certain scenes quickly or switch between videos with ease while masturbating, meaning that it the viewer gets used to a huge influx of novelty each masturbation session. You can get exactly what you want to see, from twenty different girls that suit you, all in the space of 5 minutes from compilation videos. And that may not be enough.

There is plenty more research available at yourbrainonporn, and I recommend a thorough read to understand the gravity of what you are going through. For me, it put a halt to my porn surfing for good.

So how do I fix my brain and my penis? And the future of my ability to have a relationship?

You give yourself a break from porn and masturbation.

The ‘nerves that fire together wire together’ need to be allowed time to disassociate and perish over time. The advice that is out there is a timeline of 90 days to really ‘get to baseline’. This can be a very difficult time, but in the author’s experience, after 30 days, it gets significantly easier.

After you find your new baseline, it’s time to retrain yourself on how to orgasm with something resembling a vagina.

If you think this may describe you, you should read more about actually addressing it with our Action Plan here.

Questions? Objections? Rage? Sadness? Feel free to reach out to me. I’d love to include other’s stories and eventually a forum on here so we can all speak to each other more. I hope to hear from you!

References:

Yourbrainonporn – readings for all things related to studies about porn’s impact on the brain