Come on ... it's RIGHT THERE!

Thought I'd copy part of today's journal entry here to see if others feel similarly:

Part of my recovery process has been vivid dreams starting about 2-3 days after no PMO. Most of these dreams are not erotic at all, but last night, I had one which caused me to remember an erotic website that I had forgotten about. Upon waking up and recalling this site, my PMO-deprived brain basically exploded: "Wow! I remember that site! What great pictures and videos! You know, Tom, you have faster internet than when you and I visited that site before? We could go right now! How much more there will be to see? Remember this video? And this one? Oooh! I really loved this one!" and so on, and so on, and so on ... these thoughts have been with me all day thanks to the addicted part of my brain. Especially because I have to do a lot of my schoolwork on my home computer - open just one tiny Firefox tab and type just one little string of characters into the address bar and I could be there! It's THAT simple!

It got me to thinking about biology and how the brain works (my degree is in a STEM field, but definitely not biology, so I know nothing about biology at all). If I were to hold my breath for a long time, a message will come from my brain: "Stop doing that - you NEED to breathe!" If I go long enough without water/food/sleep, a message will come from my brain "Stop avoiding water/food/sleep - you NEED water/food/sleep!" When I abstain from fapping long enough, a message will come from my brain "Stop abstaining - you NEED to fap!"

Inside my head, all those messages seem to come from the same part of my brain - but they don't, do they? The first two are coming from my normal brain, but that third one comes from the addicted brain. That "addicted brain" bastard has learned to send alarms that feel and sound just like the real life-threatening alarms do. To me, the fact that addiction can warp one's life so completely is both interesting and terrifying.

I don't know if anyone else thinks about these things like this, but I think sharing and typing all of this has helped me get through today. If you made it this far, thanks for reading and I hope you have a good one!