Thats good to hear brother, im glade you quit because you saw how bad it influenced your life rather that just because its harmful, having a reason to quit something helps you keep your ground when your at your weakest, but remember why you quit. I was the same as you as i begun to search dopamine and read more about it, i realized i was not only addicted to porn, but all to short term pleasure, i was first starting to smoke socially and drink socially too, but quickly was drinking was doubling my alcohol intake from beer to drinking vodka alone, and like you my friend, i noticed almost my body being quickly tolerant to it, i remember getting drunk a week from drink half a bottle of vodka, then next week it did nothing and this continued as i to get worse every weak, same with smoking i started 4 years ago with 1 week now i ended up with 12/14 a day and it did nothing and i was increasing cigarettes intakes every month i was sensing something was wrong with my life before as i didn't feel happy even with drugs, porn made realize all addiction follow the same pattern, you start low you become tolerant so you need more to get off, and whats worse the more high dopamine doses you get from quick fixes, you life become more miserable in your eyes, and how couldn't it not, things in your life release small dopamine doses, and now your used to ton high doses, in short word you brain isn't sensitive to low dopamine doses anymore, i remember relapsing once and tried to smoke again, as i did i realized i just can’t go back to that old life, so i salut your change too brother lets all make it.
I quoted that part specifically, to agree with you 100% on this. What brought me here was realizing years of porn abuse had led to a tolerance level, where I needed more extreme kinds to feel the dopamine. They have a phrase for this, called "porn escalation". You start out with mainstream stuff and then your brain adapts, so you seek "novelty", and over time this results in consuming more graphic/extreme/risky content. This can actually create a kind of feedback loop that can affect what you are drawn to. It is artificial, but over time it can start to change you. I felt this happening to me and it shook me up pretty bad. However, luckily, I discovered that this process is reversible. Abstaining from PMO over many weeks or months (maybe even years), we can find ourselves "resetting" back to our natural state. Our "true" selves begin to return. Healthy positive thoughts and feelings come back to us. We can heal. You are not alone here. Many are fighting the fight with you. And believe me, there is hope, and there is a path back towards a better future. It takes time and commitment but the mind and body are resilient and we can recover. Keep going friend.
Day 9/90. Busy day, but still a pretty good one. This week will probably pick up, so I need to make sure I'm getting enough sleep.
Day 17/90. Had a good day yesterday. I think I had one or two temptation moments. Often it's when things are not going the way I want and my way of "fixing" it is to think about using porn.
Day 23 ✔. Remaining days : 67 days. One thing about the importance of my nofap journey is "give it what it takes".treat your nofap streak as an end in itself .
Back on the horse, man. Relapse is part of the process. The time you've done so far isn't null because of a relapse.
Relapse. After a 4 day stretch. Looking back I can see the silent and major triggers. I can and will do this. 0/90. No Porn. No nudes. No masturbating. No orgasm. Let's do this!
Day 39! Man I feel great! Haven't gotten any urges for a long time and when I do, it seems to just come and go like that. I've been making a conscious effort to block out lustful thoughts and it's served me well these past few days. I've just been focusing on working on myself and laser focusing on my goals and it's been very fulfilling. Wish you all the best. Stay strong! We're all in this thing together, aim for one more day and keep the end goal in mind which is to beat this addiction.
