35 and Older Accountability Group

Checking in...

 

Day 37. Still feeling pretty good, no urges or anything going on.

 

Slipped up today.

 

Some motivation for the heroes here

Do not be limited by what others expect of you, but reach confidently for the stars.
—Shirley Ann Jackson

"Most things I worry about never happen anyway"
—Tom Petty

If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off... no matter what they say.
—Barbara McClintock

“Self-Conquest is the greatest of victories. Mighty is he who conquers himself”
—Bruce Lee

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
—George Santayana

Thanks to @jk243 & @One Eyed Owl & @Wolfyoufeed !

 

Day 38. Checking In.
Workout Day - 30.

Finally this is the longest streak after joining this group. I failed 2 times on day 37 after joining the group. This group has been really helpful so far.

I had promised myself to buy Yoga mat if I touch 30 days of workout. I will order it online today. I feel encouraged to keep doing good things.

Keep going guys.

 

Does anyone of you feel the music deeply when on NoFap? The same music feels like more immersive to me. Any experience on this ? Is this a sign of brain getting recovered and brain trying to find the pleasure by trying to go deeper in other things ?

 

Onwards to Day 60 and beyond. I'm feeling very confident atm.

 

Music is one of the other things that produces Dopamine. Too much porn basically overloads (and shuts down) the dopamine receptors for all other things that give you dopamine, so as you reboot, everything else that gives you pleasure start giving you even more pleasure as those receptors start coming back online.

 

That's good return of nofap in itself. We can certainly give up few second of pleasure for hours of pleasure which music can give and it is a pure pleasure. I hope I feel music more and more as I progress.

 

I too feel like I will touch that 60 days mark this time.

 

Can you please tell me what are the other things which produces dopamine? I would like to be encouraged by knowing all those things which will improve my life experience. Which we missed for 2 decades.

 

GREAT NEWS Keep it up and congratulations on this new milestone!

 

• Meeting up with friends
• Eating delicious food
• Playing computer games
• Watching a great movie
• Playing sport
• Watching sport
• Learning a new hobby
• Setting and achieving goals.

Dopamine is that feeling of excitement you get when you do something you enjoy, or when you're about to do anything you enjoy. When you do something in the list above, there's always a sense of anticipation before you do it... sometimes, the anticipation gives you more pleasure than the thing itself. That anticipation, that build up, is all dopamine. And for activities that give continual enjoyment, (i.e. listening to music, as opposed to eating) that also means continual dopamine, though of course it trails off after a while if there's no variation/novelty. Novelty is king when it comes to producing dopamine.

Dopamine is also that sense of achievement when you finally complete something you worked hard for, like finishing off a hard task at work, or finally reaching a goal. Ironically, the feeling we're getting right now from achieving such a great streak, is dopamine. This is also why a lot of people struggle to meet their goals... they get a big dose of dopamine at the start and the end, but nothing in the middle, so they struggle and sometimes quit half way through.

 

That's a valuable information. Thank you.

But doesn't this mean that even these things can cause damage to brain if done continuously without control? If we listen to music for a long time continuously then isn't it a high dopamine bath? Why doesn't it feel like that even we listen for 2 hours?

But yeah, certainly I feel that I am building up the confidence to meet people and make friends. Also, I feel that my voice is in more control. I don't play computer games and haven't felt any difference in movie watching experience may be concentration is improved but I am not sure. Learning a new hobby, yes that is enjoyable really. May be learning when you are on nofap is way more better than learning when you fap regularly.

 

Thank you dude. best wishes for you too.

 

Food and sex are the two big dopamine providers, as they're the ones that are most heavily related to our natural survival instincts. That's why so many people become obese. But still, with food you get full after a while, which usually cuts the dopamine rush off, so it's not as bad as porn, which is never-ending and doesn't have the same physical cut-off. (I think with rats they did experiments where, if you put a male rat in the same pen as many female rats, the male rat will quite literally have sex until it dies of exhaustion. That's how powerful the sex drive is.)

Other things like music aren't critical to our survival, so our brain doesn't generate massive dumps of dopamine, the way it does with food and sex.

Generally speaking, the only way you can damage your brain is by overloading the dopamine receptors. Which is extremely hard to do with anything other than porn... with food you have physical limits, though I suspect morbidly obese people might manage to screw up their dopamine receptors from eating. Everything else though, just doesn't produce enough dopamine... unless you start getting into addictive substances, of course.

 

Pretty logical explanation, mate! thank you for going into detail. This is something we must understand.

By the way, I think there is a strange and complicated connection between procrastination and PMO. Does it have anything to do with dopamine? May be the excess dopamine in the brain thinks that there is no need for any pleasure so we can postpone work? Is it kind of escapism of brain ? Will the procrastination improve automatically as a result of abstinence ? I see no progress so far in procrastination apart from exercise these days which I do every morning regularly. But the office work still sucks. I keep procrastinating till the last moment.

 

I would see it more like, the thing you are avoiding by procrastinating will give you a dopamine surge when complete. PMO on the other hand, offers instant gratification. I think this why, when I have any task to do when I won't feel good until after it is complete, I have to focus to keep my brain from leading me down the wrong path. At least at the start of a streak - it gets easier as new habits form.

 

Wow, I have reached the giddy heights of day 37. I haven't had a streak this long since the summer of 2021!

I know this because I have been tracking my streaks for some time now. I would recommend it as a way to discover patterns in your own behaviour, it has certainly helped me.

 

I relapsed again and even worse I was binging. It doesn't do me any good I need to stop it. Back at day 0.