Day 17 - Flaline :(

I am on my vacation

I lay down on my comfy bed now

Having had the best breakfast at home this morning

Having had good time with my family about 2 hours ago

Having had the best conversation with my fiancée last night

Despite the amazingly sounding portion of my life that I just told you about,

I feel lazy, depressed, exhausted and anxious.


Today is my 17th day of Nofap

I looked up the symptoms that I have, and how I feel about life

I researched this for at least 15 hours this past week

I found exactly what I am suffering from I think

It’s called: “anhedonia”

It is the inability to feel pleasure in normally pleasurable activities.

Apparently its a popular term among the recovering addicts.

I will never be able to put how I feel better than how this one brother did:


“I think besides anxiety and depression, so commonly mentioned here, one of the worst withdrawal symptoms is that you cannot feel a thing besides anxiety and or depression.


It's hard to explain for me but it feels as if nothing is capable of making you feel good and happy. It's as if you've lost a connection with Earth or nature and things like sunshine, seasons or nature do nothing for you anymore. It's as if your emotions and feelings are flattened and the only thing you can feel is depression or anxiety. Don't know if it makes sense but perhaps in itself it is the definition of depression or anxiety.”


When people like me recover from porn addiction they go through a period of time they call “Flatline”. In this time period, they experience Post acute withdrawal symptoms. Some of the common symptoms include: Depression, Exhaustion, Brain fog, Short term memory loss, Laziness, Hopelessness, ...etc. According to what I saw on the many blogs posted on NOFAP, porn addicts may continue to experience that for up to two years. There seems to be a spectrum of varying durations though. I believe that all of this has to do with the neurochemistry of our brains. When you have invested your brain in pornography sensitization for 15 years. What do you expect to get back? Don’t you think that your brain will do its best to get back the excitement cues it used to get; no matter what?


I really have two options at this point:

1. Stay on hardmode, go through all of this now, maintain my strength and never go back to porn because that would sit me back in my recovery. Basically get the hits while fighting
2. Or let go like I always did and go back to the miserable life. May be I will be able to enjoy more things in the short term but on the long run I would lose the meaning of my life. I would also lose my love, my fiancée, my baby.