Post acute withdrawal and my symptoms. Can you relate?

TimeToChange59837 - brother, I can not tell if you are being genuine.. but your advice is dangerous. Please could you reconsider giving matter of fact advice on topics you haven't experienced yourself or are ignorant about. Your counter says 104 days, which is a major achievment, but a lot of us here are a lot further on, and our cases I'm guessing are way more severe. Your postings are causing more harm than good

Sexual fantasy releases dopamine and fires pathways same as porn. For those of us with PAWS full eradication of lust is needed. My last sexual thought was exactly 4 weeks ago. That's not to say I haven't seen girls in the gym or thought a girl is attractive. But if my mind tries to build an intention to construct a mental sexual scenario.. I simply let go with the understanding this is completely imaginary/illusory, and I'm only doing it for a hit of dopamine - which quite frankly at this point I can do without

 

I am so glad for this thread. I am on my 5th month PMO free. I have good days and I notice I am healing. But some days all of the sudden the symptoms from my initial recovery will come back. Foggy mind, flu like symptoms, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, depressed feelings and etc.. at least these comments give me hope and make me feel like I’m not out here alone with my symptoms.

 

That's how I feel as well after each month. Then the purge start again at the beginning of the next month.

 

Fantasies everyonce and while, sure. But a obsession is not normal. Not being able to wake up or go a minute almost without thinking sexual thoughts. Not normal. When it overtakes you’re brain, it’s not ok. I don’t want to be over sexualized

 

Wow man. What a heartfelt and descriptive comment. Thank you very much and that helped shed some light on some of the situations. Sometimes I try to look at it as a strength training routine. Every rep to failure gets your stronger. And then every time you resist PMO you get stronger. Best of luck to you sir.

 

Your posts inspire and motivate me so much man.

 

I know I sure do. And sometimes it’s not days, but hours. And then I fall back into the withdrawl feelings.

Has anyone here had higher than normal blood
Pressure readings during nofap? I’m sure it’s related to inscreased stress we are putting ourselves through by not giving into our drug. I have had higher than normal blood pressure that’s been fluctuating. I know it goes up and down throughout the day also so I’m going to try taking it everyday at home at different times and writing it down.

 

100% for me... its cyclic every 30 days or so. Once a month I go through a phase of 4-7 days where Im super tired, body feels fried, don't sleep more than 4-5 hours, super anxious, and it's around this time my brain will try and attack with sexual fantasy. After around 6-7 days it passes and it feels like making recovery, and I'll hit around 2-3 days where start to feel normal, and then cycle continues

 

Listen guys, I suffer from severe PTSD too [not related to PAWS etc] and just remember that NOBODY feels on top of the world 100% of the time. Having 4-5 shitty days in a month is pretty normal. Actually most people feel shitty all the time and wait only for the weekend to get drunk to ease the suffering a bit [not knowing that they are just adding to it more shit]
Be easy with yourself.

 

That is it ,brain fog come when you view porn you see ,I have this same issues also about everything that happen to you,to all this veiwers seeing this ,the causes of all this symptoms is because you are addicted .my dear our dopamine is low there by leading to homonal imbalanced and all these symptoms you experience are as a result of homonal change in the body including pimples ,my dear give your body time to heal ,don't view porn,don't mastubate,your brain and your body will come back to normal .

 

Hi BigFallOfFire - sorry to hear about your PSTD.

You obviously aren't suffering from PAWS - I've previously asked above for people who aren't experience it or who are ignorant about it to not post blind advice or comments however well intentioned as they don't add any value and just dilute the discussion.

I'm an adult - Im aware that life isn't a cosmis bliss everyday. PAWS is real - I hope you don't have to endure it and then have others downplay it and ignorantly comment on it.

 

Big thumbs up for meditation.. I missed meditation today and nearly relapsed.. (may or may not relate) it’s not a game changer but every little bit helps..it definitely makes a difference.

 

For years I experienced emotional numbness. I've been recovering over the last 6 years approx and dealing primarily with anxiety and anger. Both are much improved fortunately. It is however only quite deep into my current streak that I realise that the numbed emotions are now being revealed more as depressive thoughts and feelings. It's unpleasant but at the same time I'm relieved that I can feel more emotion. Im hopeful that at some stage it will give way to the return of more positive emotions and thoughts.

Has anyone else followed a similar path?

 

Indurian, whats your longest streak during this past 6 years?

The bad news I fear is that if we relapse during recovery we at best stall our recovery and at worse severely lengthen it.

 

My current streak is my longest. I've mainly had 3-4 month streaks interspersed with relapses. I had gotten to the stage where I was relapsing once per week but binging for a few hours each time.

 

Bad idea. Meditation is poor people's drug. I would not play with that, especially if someone experience paws too.

 

Where is this research of "The runners high" because I run multiple miles, play basketball, and lift weights every day and I call bullshit. And for the meditating it literally frees the mind the goodness you feel is not supposed to last all day it is supposed to clean the slate so you can be prepared for anything that is to happen.

 

you got tolerance. when I started cycling it was euphoric. then after several months I had to cycle longer distance to feel that rush again. nowadays, I rarely feel anything, I have to go like 100 km in a day to get it back lol

 

after 90 days:
- lightheadedness
- randon tingling pain (negligible) in body
armpits, near the ears, feet and back
- noisy stomach / frequent farting

 

Interesting thoughts thanks,
I must admit I have had doubts about meditation at different times in this journey but on the whole I don’t think I could do without it now.
I wouldn’t describe it as any type of high at all. Clean slate as mentioned above is a great description.
You start the day without your thoughts fighting against you and you maintain that for as long as you can.. eventually constantly.

I find if I keep “Not thinking about porn” or “Quitting porn” that Porn is always my focus.. lately (I believe primarily due to Meditation) my mind is much calmer and I very rarely think of Porn at all.
I even forgot to fill in my journal on Monday as it just wasn’t on my mind like it used to be.
I certainly agree that nobody really knows what’s best and I sure wish I did.
Thanks for your comments as the only way we will ever work it out is from open sharing and comparison of our individual experiences.