Boosting Serotonin to Inhibit Compulsive Behaviors During a Reboot

Porn addiction is driven by dopamine, just like all addictions. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter in your brain that tells you "this feels good, let's do it again" when encountering natural rewards, such as food, sex, money, and material possessions.

Modern internet porn, with its endless novelty, shocking material, and ease of access, is a supernormal stimulus, which causes significant changes to your body's dopamine levels and absorption ratios. You can find a more thorough explanation of these processes in this YBOP article: Evolution has not prepared your brain for today’s porn. Searching "Your Brain on Porn dopamine" into Google will also bring up plenty of results.

The bottom line is that your brain has irregular dopamine levels and has extreme dopaminergic reactions, causing intense compulsions and behaviors when rebooting.

How can we counteract this?

The problem is dopamine, so we need to find ways to limit or stabilize it. A neurotransmitter that seems to have a negative correlation with dopamine is serotonin.

Serotonin and dopamine are both called the "happy" chemical, but they are extremely different. Dopamine tells you "this feels good, let's do it again", while serotonin tells you "this feels good, I've had enough".

While one can anecdotally say dopamine encourages "seeking or wanting" and serotonin encourages "contentment or fulfillment", studies show that there is also a direct negative correlation between the two; if dopamine or serotonin is high, the other is low. Below the quotes from the papers I give 1 sentence summaries, so feel free to skip.

From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2612120/

"Serotonergic dysfunction in the PFC also appears to underlie the comorbidity of impulsive aggression with depression, substance abuse, and suicidal behaviors. A modified diathesis-stress model has been proposed, in which a biological diathesis is regarded as a serotonergic deficiency in the ventral PFC. This deficiency can lead to dopamine hyperactivity as a result of reduced serotonergic control over the dopamine system. These pathological processes may result in a failure to regulate emotion, leading to impulsive and aggressive behavior towards the self and others. Additionally, dopamine hyperactivity resulting from deficient serotonergic regulation can promote substance abuse and other addictive behaviors. Further, individuals with impulsive aggression are vulnerable to depression as a function of low serotonergic activity. The presence of depression may contribute further to self-directed aggression or suicide during severe depressive episodes or under significant life stressors."

This study's conclusion is saying that serotonin deficiency can lead to dopamine hyperactivity, which increases the risk and severity of addiction.

From https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452212003983#s0050

"The primary ascending serotonergic neurons originate from the median and dorsal raphe nuclei (see Fig. 2B) (Dahlstroem and Fuxe, 1964, Azmitia and Segal, 1978) and make extensive connections with a number of structures involved in the regulation of impulse control, principally the ventral tegmental area (VTA), substantia nigra (SNc), nucleus accumbens (NAcb), hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex (Dalley et al., 2011, Hayes and Greenshaw, 2011). At the synaptic level 5-HT regulates the activity of many neurotransmitters including DA-containing neurons in the VTA and SNc (McMahon et al., 2001, Fink and Gothert, 2007, Bubar et al., 2011) and interactions between 5-HT and DA reportedly contribute to the expression of certain categories of impulsivity (Winstanley et al., 2006a) and may even have a bearing on the aetiology of ADHD (Oades, 2002, Oades, 2007).

Early studies in rats assessed the effects on impulsivity of globally depleting 5-HT in the brain with the neurotoxin 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine (5,7-DHT) infused directly into the cerebro-ventricular system. Depletion of 5-HT was accompanied by a selective increase in premature responding on the 5-CSRTT (Harrison et al., 1997) and impaired behavioural restraint on a go/no-go task (Harrison et al., 1999). Consistent with these findings, rats administered the 5-HT depleting stimulant, parachloroamphetamine, showed impairments on a go/no-go task (Masaki et al., 2006) and global 5,7-DHT lesions increased impulsivity on a variant of the 5-CSRTT (Winstanley et al., 2004). Thus, manipulations that reduce 5-HT function impair the capacity of subjects to inhibit the initiation of a pre-potent response, a tendency that is exaggerated when subjects must avoid responding on explicit no-go trials."

This paragraph is showing that serotonin regulates dopamine neurons, and lowered serotonin levels directly correlate with impaired behavior restraint (impulsivity).

From https://academic.oup.com/ijnp/article/11/5/625/968226#87361448

"The selective lesion of DA neurons elicited by 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) decreased the spontaneous firing activity of dorsal raphe (DR) nucleus 5-HT neurons by 60%, thus revealing the excitatory effect of the DA input on these 5-HT neurons."

This section from the abstract is showing how increases in dopamine reduced the firing of serotonin neurons, showing their inhibiting effects on each other.

We can conclude that serotonin deficiencies and dopamine hyperactivity go hand in hand, making addictions much more frequent and severe. Therefore, boosting serotonin levels and regulating dopamine will make quitting porn addiction much easier and much more effective.

Regulating dopamine irregularities is done by NoFap's bread and butter: the reboot. If you spend enough time away from porn, you will see your dopamine levels spike (the initial super-horny phase right after quitting), then plummet (the flatline), and then normalize over time (after 90+ days when paired with positive activities).

How do we increase serotonin though?

You can find countless ways to increase serotonin on the internet, but these are my favorites:

• long distance aerobic exercises
  • running, swimming, hiking, biking, etc
• high carb and protein diet (natural and unprocessed foods!)
  • pastas, bread, rice, whole wheat products, vegetables
  • chicken, eggs, fish (salmon and tuna), lean beef, yogurt
• getting lots of sunlight
• lots of time spent in nature/outside
• massage
• lowering or removing drug/alcohol consumption

Knowledge is the ultimate weapon in the fight against porn addiction. I know things like running and eating right are pretty standard for helping quit porn, but understanding why they help is really important! Understanding what's happening to you helps you craft solutions and plans to help quit instead of shooting in the dark. Regulating your dopamine and increasing serotonin will make your reboot much easier, more effective, and set you up for a fantastic sexual lifestyle.