Abstinence & Depression

Hey,
First of all sorry to hear about your struggles, hope your wife gets well soon! Best of luck and good health.
Secondly, yes, abstinence can cause depression, for two big reasons. On one hand, if you are/were a porn/masturbation addict, your chronic habit will have caused low levels of a neurotransmitter called serotonin through frequent release of a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which will cause a type of dopamine dependency.
Now, this is where things get a little tricky and confusing. Dopamine and serotonin are both feel-good neurotransmitters. The difference is, dopamine is excitatory, while serotonin is not. Serotonin is the one you want to care about the most. It is nature's antidepressant. This is the calming "happy hormone" circulating your system. For this reason it's the main target of antidepressant medications. Dopamine is the stimulating "pleasure hormone", which unfortunately is capable of downregulating your nervous system's brakes, the serotonergic pathways (as well as the gabaergic pathways). Dopamine is kind of an anti-depressant in disguise, it will make you feel great, but it really acts as a depressant at the same time since it will downregulate your serotonergic functions. Biochemically speaking it is very similar to adrenaline. It excites, and because it excites it has some potent (pseudo)anti-depressant properties, it mainly motivates and can provide feelings of satisfaction. This is why some anti-depressant medications will sometimes also target dopamine. It can mimick some of serotonin's functions so to speak, masking deficiencies in this all too important neurotransmitter, in fact, it will mask it so good you won't even know it's there. So dopamine kind of works in both ways. The catch is, dopamine acts short-term, unlike your serotonin which acts long-term, that is, if you have enough of it, which won't be the case if you are a dopamine addict.
So, here's what happens when you abstain. No serotonin, no dopamine, the latter being the feel-good neurotransmitter your system most likely has become dependent on. This will cause a release of stress hormones that will lead to either anxiety or depression. Withdrawal can be hell in severe cases of porn and masturbation addiction. Some guys even need anti-depressants. Their serotonin will be so low their bodies won't be able to handle the sudden drop in dopamine. Porn addiction can cause biochemical imbalances that bad.
If your depression isn't so bad that you get extreme phobias or suicidal ideations, there's all of the natural remedies you can try: clean diet, exercise, being in nature, meditating, traveling, socializing, etc. All of this can help rebalance your neurotransmitters to their natural levels. I'm afraid withdrawal is a cycle. If you ejaculate before this cycle is broken, you will restart this cycle if you truly have an addiction. This can cause depression and or anxiety to become worse, which recovering addicts will sometimes call kindling. Some withdrawal induced conditions can take 1 or 2 years to recover from, in the worst of cases perhaps even more. The good news is, you can get out of it if you go all the way, natural sex seems to be okay for recovering addicts but if you ask me ejaculation will always be a risk factor. It's a huge stress on the body and for someone in withdrawal it can be a life sucker. In any case it's better to have natural sex with another person than it is to masturbate to pornography. If you can't have natural sex, you probably want to step up your abstinence game since masturbation or any other artificial thing that isn't your wife will further rob you of your body's own anti-depressant neurotransmitters.
Hope this answers most of your questions? Good luck in any case!

 

I am bipolar 2, and well clinically depressed (so they say lol) and yes as the bken explained i was wondering if there is a co relation, because since i started my NoFap journey i have been battling depression more than usual

 

My depression\flatline has been so overwhelming lately it's really starting to become a drag. I'm 72 days no PMO, before that a 40 day streak ended by a one off relapse. This thread and those like it give great insight, knowledge and comfort, I think I've been over eating, especially sugary foods and coffee, to get that brain chemical spike, I've become so easily irritable, especially at work, I'm so moody and snappy, but anyway I'm also exercising more, walks, weights, bike rides, reading, getting out in nature. I've a long history of pmo addiction so no quick fix it seems, but I'm it it (nofap) for the long haul as I can't bear the thought of wanking my life away anymore, still, this low mood can fuck off anytime soon.