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Addiction Redirected - Re-configuring Neural Pathways

Discussion in 'Porn Addiction' started by AlexanderTheAverage, Nov 27, 2017.

  1. AlexanderTheAverage

    AlexanderTheAverage New Fapstronaut

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    Hello Fapstronauts,

    Currently, I can't seem to peel my mind away from searching for sultry seductresses amidst my most frequented pornographic hangouts. Tomorrow is my one week abstention from my ritualistic self indulgence. Like all rituals, it tends to get messy, but I am determined to keep it clean and tend my loins no more.

    I am a man on a mission, a mission to stop fapping.

    Enjoy this novelty plug:

    [​IMG]

    As a response to this sudden shift in stimulation, I am left to think of ways to divert this extra sexual energy due to my rampant indiscriminate sexualization of everything and everyone I see. You would not believe the boner collection I've gathered.

    @StopTheMusic shared with me a link to watch on porn addiction.


    This was a very good video to watch, as its length was proper enough to divert my attention a few minutes, and the information was easy to grasp.

    My mind is left lubricated with a myriad of thoughts, particularly with respect to the title. If addiction causes physical changes in the brain, and an individual decides to stop stimulation of a certain measure (in this case masturbation, pornography, referencing the Reward Circuit), well, those physical changes remain.

    Now, lets say you decide never to polish your knob again. Does that portion of your brain just atrophy? Shall I create a requiem for that particular segment of my noggin? Will the nerves never again fire unless I go online and with equal amounts of interest and trepidation select the "For Women" category?

    I think not, but certainly those segments of the brain have been conditioned. So, here're the questions, with regards to neuroscience and mindfulness:

    Is it possible to retrain yourself to fire off portions of the brain conditioned for an addiction? At will?
    Can you do this while actively engaged in another activity?
    If so, what affects does it have on this activity (negative or positive)?

    If I choose to, say, pick up a guitar every time I would have made love to myself, will there be a neurological connection between the two activities creating similar levels of stimulation, intrigue, and motivation?

    I know that's a fancy way of saying
    "will I git gud at the gitar if I play that insted of fappin"

    But, elaborate, if you will.
     
    Deleted Account likes this.
  2. Hey @AlexanderTheAverage ,

    Porn has been around for a very long time. Roman ruins from 2,000 years ago show murals in the rooms of houses with pornographic images on them. Those same ruins show us gratify with pornographic messages. Paintings and later photographs were commonly pornographic. In fact, as soon as the camera was invented, someone took a nude photo.

    I grew up in an age where a playboy magazine was an amazing find. Furtively "borrowing" one the returning it was about as much porn as I saw when I was younger.

    The point of all of that is that porn was used to lead to "real sex", not as a substitute for real sex. No matter how vulgar a certain magazine was, it could not compete with real sex.

    So, really, masturbation was a part of a healthy sex life as it trained the brain to want to seek out real people to have sex with.

    When that real sex happened it was far better than any picture in a book or magazine. But, with online porn in high definition and with headphones on, the opposite is true. The brain gets trained to expect perfect images. As well, the brain is trained that if a particular image or vid is not working, just click to the next image.

    So, why hard reboot? The answer is that the sexual portion of your brain isn't atrophied it's lazy. Why go out, get groomed, well dressed and find a sex partner? It's much easier to stay home, stay ungroomed and find the "perfect" sex online. But, then when real sex happens DE , PIED and a few other problems happen because it's not possible to flip to the next vid or click on the next image.

    A hard reboot doesn't train that lazy part of the brain to want sex. It already wants sex. A hard reboot trains the lazy part of your brain to be willing to seek sex in the real world using all the methods our grandfathers used. Take a bath, get social, find a mate.

    I had surgery not that long ago. About three weeks after the surgery I had a followup appointment with the doctor. I asked him if I could drive the car. He raised an eyebrow at me ask asked if I could drive before the surgery - because nothing he'd done in surgery had given me the ability to drive.

    So, my question to you is could you learn the guitar before you stopped pmo? Because, if you had a talent to learn it, you can learn it now.

    It's dangerous to give me permission to elaborate. I type 100 words a minute and can go on for days.

    So, I'll stop with this one point. Your concern is valid. Be careful about from which part of your brain the concern nags at you. The part of your brain that wants to pmo will seed doubts in you, create false beliefs that this program is fake when in fact it is very real.

    It took me a quite a few times before I came to believe in the NoFap program.

    I like to break down "Came to Believe" into three steps.

    1. First I "Came"
    2. Then I "Came to"
    3. Then I "Came to Believe"

    I learned that in 12 step programs, but it's true of NoFap as well.

    L
     
    AlexanderTheAverage likes this.

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