Hey guys! I am a 41 year old male and I'm currently at day 46 of a 90 day hard mode reboot in a relationship after about three decades of PMO. I must say it's a very interesting ride so far. I'm refinding my lost self and at the same time refining myself by picking up active fitness workouts for the very first time in my life! It is a challenging process for both me and my wife with extremely good days and - especially the first couple of weeks - not so goods ones. Overall I must say that I'm amazed at the speed inner feelings and related behaviour changes after stopping something as simple as PMO. It's eye-opening and truly motivating to get almost instant feedback of your body and mind that what you're doing is working out for the best, eventhough the addiction is constantly fighting to get you back on board. This past weekend I experienced something I didn't encounter before. I thought I'd share this with the community I normally don't watch TV besides the occasional Netflix TV series. The other day me and my wife started to watch this TV series. I can't even remember what it is called. While watching two episodes I started feeling more and more depressed. I stopped watching and went to bed early to try to stop this feeling. The next day I woke up feeling alright, went to work, got back home and pretty much was doing great. After dinner my wife and me picked up our series where we left off and sure enough the depressed feeling was again growing on me. Again I stopped watching and turned in early. Next day I told my wife that watching this serie is triggering depression and so we decided to watch Zootopia (great movie btw). Sure thing the same feeling of depression started to grow on me while watching a Disney animation movie! I can best describe the depressed feelings as self pity. It also triggered a pretty intense craving for MO. Being depressed and having huge cravings I forced myself to do something else. I jumped on my hometrainer and went cycling. Almost immediately I felt the depression fade away. Fading of the craving followed soon. I always had a hard time doing nothing. To me, sitting watching TV falls in that category. I guess while TV-ing and doing nothing my unconsious mind probably went into PMO territory or my addiction reminded me that since you're free why not do some PMO for old times' sake, huh? Putting my mind to something else clearly works for me but is this not like running away from the essence of my addiction recovery? I surely cannot continue to duck whenever this feeling pops up. Is it better to accept the feeling and just sit it out? I'm sure it will not lead to relapse since I simply won't let that happen. It's just that the depression is very intense and I have found a way to actively push it away. I'm just not sure if this is a structural solution. I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Do you recognize the depression or the feeling-sorry-for-yourself mood? What helps for you? Thanks guys!
I would suggest deal with this in small doses. Don't try to power through it all at once, you may not predict the fallout if you do, especially when dealing with depression and cravings. You may not want to negatively overstimulate yourself.
@D.J. Thanks for your feedback! I guess that the sudden in kick of depression is just another withdrawal sign and this will fade over time. Can anybody relate?
Most definitely! If we've been used to constant dopamine highs, anything that remotely reminds us of it yet isn't it becomes a low until we mentally and emotionally come to grips with the fact that the high wasn't healthy. As far as the depression, this too shall pass.
Time for a small update. I'm currently at day 80 and actually doing pretty well. Urges come and go, resisting them is getting easier and S, P, M and O are no longer constantly on my mind. Come to think of it they haven't been for quite some time now. The anxiety I described in my initial post had faded over the days following my post and didn't return at all. Depression occasionally kicks in but Karezza with the wife proves to be a great solution for this! 10 more days and I will have reached my initial goal of 90 days of total abstinence. Since I succesfully introduced Karezza which me and my wife are really enjoying I'm planning to ban PMO for the rest of my life. Bring it on!
