Advice about sleep while on NoFap

Hi all, I posted this on my my recovery journal, but wanted to put the question out here a little more publicly, to hear if anyone had further opinions. Thanks in advance to anyone who has advice!

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I'd love some advice on something:

As mentioned above, yesterday (day 4 of no PMO) I had some pretty potent blue balls and anxiety, at various times throughout the day.

I ended up going to bed around 10pm. I had a work trip this morning so I wanted to get some good sleep so I could be ready for it.

Now, I sleep really well all the time, but last night I couldn't fall asleep for the life of me. I was super horny, nonstop from when I turned off my light until about 2am. I tried a bunch of things to fall asleep: stretching, breathing/meditative techniques, etc., But to no avail.

Eventually, in order to just be able to fall asleep, I decided to masturbate.

It was a very... Clean? Surgical? Mechanical? process. All my screens were in another room, and there was no porn involved. I didn't visualize anything. It wasn't like I was playing back porn in my mind to get off. It was just a "do this for a short period of time and you'll experience release" kind of process.

When I was done and cleaned up, I rolled over, and fell asleep a couple minutes later.


The reason I write that in such detail is to say, this isn't the first streak I have had go this way. Over the last couple years there's been a few instances where I've gone 2 or more months without porn, but have not been able to make it much more than a week without masturbation.

I know it's possible to do so, but consistently a story like the one above is what plays out for me: get a few day no M streak, and ride it till horniness keeps me awake for 4+ hours a night... Then relapse just to be able to sleep.

Does anyone have any advice on this? It sounds like many people see a downturn in raging horniness/urges after a few weeks. But getting there has been troublesome for me.

I think the decision I had to make that could have kept me from it this time might have been taking some melatonin. I had some upstairs, but our house is super creaky, and I didn't want to wake anyone to get it. My final "choice", appeared to be that, though: try to find the melatonin and wake family members, or masturbate.

I'll try to keep a pill or two more accessible in the future, especially when a streak starts to get longer (at least, by my standards ) and the stakes get higher. But if I can, I'd like to have a more solid plan/technique in place than relying on a substance just to be able to sleep when these situations come up again in the future.

Anyone got any advice?

Thanks in advance!!

 

Thanks, @Avallon ! That's a good idea. I'll give it a try next time. You don't find that doing that raises your heart rate too much to be able to sleep after exercising?