Hi there. I know porn is messing with your dopamine system and I desperately want to abstain. But I still got some questions. Let's start off simple and I'll ask more questions along the way: why do we feel better in the long term by abstaining from porn?
Semen is power.. many ancient cultures valued semen and ur balls won't explode no matter how long you abstain nothing bad comes from it..
Okay. That is clear to me. I've felt the wonderful effects. But what's actually going on with your dopamine when you're abstaining?
When we view porn for many time dopamine goes to low level and low level! Our brain want your dopamine and we go to harder porn to give him more! When we stop porn dopamine comes in some days to real normal levels! I hope helps you!
Okay. Thanks for your explanation. So you can basically state that being extremely high on dopamine (by porn) does eventually gets you low on dopamine. So when you're working on yourself by replacing bad habits by new good ones, you'll be feeling more satisfied. But here's the thing I'm wondering. In what measure do we have to replace things that won't help you in the long term? Should we all cut down sugar and stop watching stupid tv shows as well? I'm just curious how far you can take this.
From what I've heard dopamine itself isn't the problem. It's the dopamine receptors. If you watch porn, you rewire these receptors over time, causing them to get over-stimulated with dopamine. Research now suggest that the receptors actually shrink, cause of that is evident, i.e. the dopamine-surge. The receptors are bombarded with this neurochemical and therefore become tired/lazy. In time, if you get that dopamine hit enough times in a row, you can actually shrink the reward center in your brain. Then, if you know what's happening and try to break the addiction, you will feel very miserable, because the now undersized dopamine-receptors aren't getting the dopamine splash they're used to. If you abstain long enough, the receptors in your reward circuitry have no choice but to grow again, in order to rebalance the pathways.
There are plenty of metaphors that can help- for example, you could think about it like alcohol. If you drink every day, by like the 5th day (if your liver hasn't exploded) you'll no longer get drunk on 1 beer, you'll need 3. If you continue this (for this example, you have a liver of steel) then by day 100 you'll need 50 beers to get a buzz. If you drank one beer, you wouldn't feel a thing or get even almost drunk. After a year of not drinking any beer, you'll be able to get drunk on one beer again. In this metaphor: Beer = The level of dopamine you're 'getting' from the activity. If one beer is how much you get from a standard sexual encounter, 50 beers is how much dopamine you'd 'get' with weird porn you never thought you'd watch Drunk = an erection and a satisfactory sexual response and experience It is a little different (porn is more like 'shots of vodka' and you don't really 'get' dopamine), but that's a basic metaphor! During abstinence from porn, you're brain is recalibrating so that it doesn't need as much dopamine to 'fill the cup' in the 'receiver' and is then happy with the amount that normal activities give it.
I'll have to trust the process then. Thanks, the metophor is really helpful to rationalize my addiction