(this one is pretty personal).. In my continuing search for fulfillment, I found the video “The Great Porn Experiment”. This video really may have uncovered some habits out of alignment with my true self. I’ve been looking through various modalities of personal development and spirituality for the past few years and this is one area I hadn’t really looked into as problematic. Last year I saw a video of a talk with Gabor Mate about addiction which basically talked about addiction being choosing a short term gain at the expense of the long term (excellent video). I’ve cut out alcohol, due to bad hangovers and not enjoying the experience of being drunk. Been eating healthy and cut out gluten – to avoid inflammation n stuff which I didn’t really previously believe. I’ve even been all the way over to Peru to drink Ayahuasca to heal unconscious unprocessed trauma, which brings me to the present. This ‘porn experiment’ thing ties into some things which Ayahuasca showed me.. all revolving around sexual identity. My ability to tie it to something in my control surrounds testosterone and hormone levels. After returning from Peru I was surprised when I had some emotional crashes. By changing various habits, I was able to discern that hormone levels played a very strong role in this complex dynamic of my mood – to the point of extending beyond simply a crappy mood. It was around this time through various searching I found the above mentioned video. The video talks about depression and things of similar caliber being eased with this whole ‘nofap’ experiment.
The yourbrainonporn.com website has a page What benefits do people see as they reboot? (reboot meaning resetting neural pathways by not feeding a porn addiction)
Benefits sited include:
-No Brain Fog
-More Confidence/Less Social Anxiety
-More Energy/Focus
Those sound like things I definitely want to have running smoothly. Reiterating: hormone levels play a very strong role in this complex dynamic of my mood. The website has a lot of info regarding neuroscience n stuff like that – don’t care so much about the scientific justifications etc – just want to know about what they call ‘rebooting‘ and if/how it works. So Porn and Fapping are two different things. The site talks about how over stimulus with porn creates a brain pathway ‘rut’ – associated with the addictive behavior and it’s unwanted modification of normal functioning. The basic rule shown is “No artificial sexual stimulation during your reboot.” The second part asks “To masturbate, or not to masturbate, that is the question” – where ‘rebooting’ is different for each person in this case… I found discovering the role hormones played in my mood is very dramatic, so this info would appear to include me in the case study of all college students in the ‘use porn’ category (as opposed to the none in the ‘no porn’ category)…
I’ve also received some supplements which I was hoping would also help (Maca and Mucuna Pruriens) and I’m still looking into the correct use and preparation of them (from amazon customer reviews)
In summary: It seems like I hijacked my own mind by cheating my brains understanding of potential mates. Perhaps porn short circuits the very seed of the system of male confidence… literally :/