Is it normal for people so desensitized to pleasure, to not feel the euphoria from working out?

I haven't felt eurphoria in ages. After lifting weights and carido my mood improves slightly but nowhere near euphoria. This is normal surely. It will change in time. That's the hardest thing about this – you can do everything right and be healthy AF but you still may need to go weeks/months feeling low.

 

I read somewhere (not sure how accurate this is) that it can take up to 1 year of abstaining from PMO for your dopamine receptors to recover back to normal. I feel like mine are pretty fried personally, as I also have addictions to nicotine, screens/mindless entertainment, and slightly with sugar. However, these things make me feel hollow, as opposed to doing something I know is good for me, which gives me a genuine sense of accomplishment. I've learned to rely on that feeling, at least until my brain heals from this nasty PMO habit.

 

Interested topic.
I actually suffer form depression/anxiety and mi on therapy since about a year.
I have been using PMO since many years also during time while being married and having regular sex with my wife.
I continue workout and it is good for me - i did not found a difference with feeling about but i agree - i generally feel low after 30 day of no PMO.
Actually i during this 33 day i once had sex with my wife. It was good and i felt very present and was able to be present during making love to her.
My problem is that i generally feel low - this is to overall situation with within family and work.

 

This is one of those blackhole topics that you can obsess over. Just remember that even if you're a non-porn addict, watching and PMO'ing to it drops your dopamine levels below your normal baseline for a few hours/days. So it jacks us up. When you're an addict, you keep on doing this and your mood is all over the place. And it takes time for your dopamine system to sort out. Joy can go "offline" for a while, no matter what you do. I'm 50-something days on hard mode and only just started to feel joyful the last 2-3 days.

Resist losing your mind in the blackhole. You will feel good again soon. Just stay away form PMO and let your brain balance itself out.

 

Yeah me too. I look at my phone more and watch YouTube videos more etc. Spending time outside is the best if you can make plans to do that. I've learned over the last few years just how brutal relapses are. You feel horrible if you go back, like lower than zero. And for me, it takes me MONTHS to get back to where I was. So I remind myself that better days are coming if I stay on this path. And absolutely awful days are coming if I go back to porn are guaranteed. Don't do it. If it was such a good path, why are we on this site!

 

Agree with going outside - feeds natural reward circuits we all have. And the more you work out the more your brain will develop positive reward circuits to that, so stick with it. I’ve found it helpful tracking my exercise alongside my rebooting.

 

Same here. I'm going to gym in 5 hrs and then maybe I'll update this post. EDIT: I enjoyed my workout but even in 2 days of my nofap (not even soft p*rn) it feels like someone slapped my brain.

 

I think this is a good topic, and something that has been on my mind too.

I actually think the gym not feeling euphoric is an energy issue. I think the more energy we have the more euphoric it will be, and while we are in recovery the lack of energy can make a gym session feel like an absolute chore

For me, the deeper into recovery I have gone the harder it has been to have a gym session. In the last 3-4 months while my overall symptoms have lessened, my workouts have gone from 5 days a week, to practically 0. If I do have a session, it lasts around 35 minutes which even then can be a struggle.

However I noticed that if I was to drink a glass of coconut water, coffee or an energy drink, that the euphoric gym workout returns. In my opinion it is not so much that we have been desensitized but that we lack the pool of energy we previously had.

This is just my take based on my experience.

 

I don’t usually feel euphoric from running. I feel better at a baseline for about a day after I run, though.