What you didn't know about PMO addiction

This isn't actually true. While those things all do release dopamine, they have no effect on PMO addiction. The reason is that the brain's reward system does not release dopamine in the same way for all stimuli. It's quite sophisticated in that each specific type of stimulus gets its own dopamine response. Dopamine isn't bad - it's required for survival. What's bad is when we over-stimulate using highly concentrated forms of artificial stimuli such as high-speed internet porn. In that case, we are releasing orders of magnitude more dopamine than we should, and wiring our brains up to that type of stimulus while simultaneously reducing our sensitivity to it, which in turn requires more of that stimulus to get the same dopamine response. When taken too far, this behavior pattern results in addiction; i.e. you crave PMO all the time and find it difficult to stop.

If what you said was true, then drinking water when you're really thirsty would slow down your reboot...

All you have to do is stay off the porn and don't whack off all the time.

 

So you assume i cant listen to things i like, damn that sucks.

 

..anything can be a trigger. I'm not sure what you mean by "healing process", but any positives we take for our health and well being I think contribute to our inner strength, our person, our mental peace and our will to quit negative habbits such as PMO.

Having said that, we can't remove ourselves from life, so just learn what triggers you most and work around them.

 

I appreciate your desire to share, but I recommend you keep your advice to your own personal experience. If you wish to pontificate about the inner-workings of the human brain, either do it privately, or you should have some research results or credentials to support your claims.

Dopamine is a neurochemical that drives us towards the things we need. The reason you desperately want to drink water when you're really thirsty is because when you see the water (or think about it), that triggers a release of dopamine which then causes your reward circuit to prioritize getting the water. Rats whose reward circuits were messed with couldn't even get motivated to eat and would starve to death.

The reason we can't get addicted to water is that there is a natural satiation mechanism; we drink enough and we're satisfied; we don't want more water. But high-speed internet porn is so stimulating, it overrides our natural satiation mechanism for sex; we want more even though we've had enough. With eating and drinking, there's a physical limit to how much we can ingest. With porn, there is no such limit; you could literally sit and watch porn all day if you wanted to.

You were claiming that anything that releases dopamine slows recovery - that's simply not true!

You can get addicted to junk food because we now have access to super-stimulating versions of food that aren't found in nature; sugary, fatty treats that cause our brains to release much larger doses of dopamine than normal, natural foods do. That's why there's such an obesity problem. However, the dopamine response to junk food is orthogonal to the dopamine response to porn. In other words, one doesn't affect the other. It's a good idea to stay away from junk food anyway, but having some sugary snacks isn't going to impair your recovery from porn and fapping.

And there's nothing wrong with the brain getting into an excited state! Cold showers definitely do that, and it's been shown many times by many people that cold showers help with reboot. Just lay off the porn and fapping, and all forms of sexual fantasy / artificial sexual stimuli - and the rest will take care of itself.

It's fine to have your own beliefs about what's going on inside your body; but this forum is for people to help each other, not to promote their particular ideas about things. What I know about dopamine and PMO, I learned from reading and watching videos on yourbrainonporn.com. If you watch those videos, then I think you'll have a better idea of what I'm talking about. I didn't make this stuff up - I'm quoting credible sources of information.

 

Thanks for an interesting exchange. In my experience sugar is bad for various reasons, including greater urges for PMO. I almost completely avoid it. I have no experience with nicotine and other drugs.

 

Music helps me. There's nothing wrong with music, yo!

 

Already in antiquity (in Greece and China) people were aware of the fact that music has deep influence on our minds and societies. For instance, Plato in the Republic and Laws and Aristotle in Politics tried to distinguish good and bad music - this was for them a far more important topic than economics.

I haven't tried to look for contemporary research on this.

 

Rock and roll, and the myriad genres it spawned, is generally bad for most people.

 

No they don't - quite the opposite in fact. (depending on the "they")

Just step into any 12 step meeting and help yourself to tea, coffee and biscuits. Most NA/AA sponsors would recommend taking it easy and not worrying about such things until you're further along in your recovery.

 

Agree with you.

 

There's debate on whether caffeine should be avoided during a recovery period, but since alcoholism is a chemical addiction and what we're dealing with here is a psychological addiction, I would say caffeine should be fine, but that's just my opinion.

However, many fapstronauts find music to be very helpful during their recovery. I'm a musician, so I can say with total confidence music won't hurt a reboot.

Remember all, this is a forum for sharing opinions and experiences, so even sharing opinions others disagree with from time to time is most definitely allowed.

 

Right on Joe Pass!

 

I'm not saying I totally disagree with the idea in principle, but real life isn't so straightforward that everyone's gonna be able to do the "ideal reboot" as you so put it.

However, I'm certainly saying you're wrong about your suggestion of it being recommended, unless of course you're cherry picking the "they" down to a very small minority of physicians.

I'm not sure where you are in Europe, but here in The UK the majority of recovery happens through 12 step fellowships, and while I don't agree with everything they say, they do seem to have better success rates than the rest of the medical profession.

 

You could put those symptoms down to a lot of things though - diet, stress, and all sorts of changes in the body and mind.

I tend to think that it doesn't really matter whether an addiction is physical or psychological, because they both cause chemical reactions in the brain that stop us from functioning at our best.

This I agree with. Focusing merely on your breathing, even for a couple of minutes does seem to get you in the moment far quicker than listening to anything set to music or guided.