I’m on a 24 day streak and since day 6 I’ve been getting really vivid dreams every night for the first time in like 10 years. For the first time in 10 years I don’t feel any sleepy during the day and I wake up feeling really refreshed every morning. This benefit kicked in at the same time my social anxiety, anhedonia, lack of focus, brain fog etc reduced.
Before this, I would only have random things flowing around my head in the night and I would never feel rested even after 8-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Why is this particularly interesting? It might be so that a PMO-addict can’t get very good sleep because REM-sleep and vivid dreaming requires healthy dopaminergic activity.
Dreaming is directly driven by dopamine bombardment in the reward center. Scientists have tested the relationship of dopamine and sleep in rats who were unable to sleep if their dopamine levels were chemically manipulated.
Those people with low levels of dopamine/a problem with their dopamine receptors can’t dream and those people have excessive daytime sleepiness. Such people include those who have Parkinson’s disease or those who take dopamine agonists for psychosis, blocking dopamine reuptake in the receptor. I think PMO-junkies might be very similar to those people.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dream-catcher/201601/dopamine-and-dreams
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/3397qb/are_you_starting_to_have_vivid_dreams_congrats/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_neuroscience_of_dreams#Dopaminergic_activation
I don’t want to use the word benefits because it’s just about becoming a normal human again after 10 years of misery. Even though I neved had a diagnosed mental health problem I always knew there was something wrong with me since:
- I had a severe stutter and a robotic voice (I couldn’t make sentences smoothy, I’d end up telling awesome stories in a way that people would think I had a down syndrome lol)
- I could not really focus on listening what people said
- I had a bad concentration
- I didn’t find social interaction rewarding
- I very rarely smiled
- I didn’t care much about my health, relationships, family etc
- I had excessive daytime sleepiness no matter how much I slept and how healthy my diet was
- I never had any kinds of goals with my life
- I didn’t dream in the night
It is unbelievable but ditching PMO got rid of all of those issues. I believe it is dopamine related, since all those problems seems to do with “low dopamine sensitivity” or anything dopamine related. Even stuttering and dreaming seems to be fully about dopamine. Concentration is dopamine, wakefulness is dopamine, socializing is dopamine. You name it. But all those issues are gone after 10 years of hell. I used to PMO 2-5 times every single day. I believe that excessive PMO dysregulated the dopaminergic system so badly that it caused all of those problems.
I don’t believe I will suddenly get a “flatline” which will take away the changes I’ve experienced since this is not about “getting superpowers” but rather my brain chemistry returning to a normal state after years of abusing the dopaminergic system. For sure there are days when I feel low and have urges but all the problems I mentioned have gone and haven’t returned. I feel like nofap has saved my life.
LINK – OMG! 100% proof NoFap works! A PMO addict can’t get any REM sleep!
By Nofapproof
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