Does NoFap make you happier?
I can’t give you a straightforward answer to this frequently asked question.
Why?
Firstly, the NoFap journey isn’t a straightforward one.
Secondly, happiness—just like any other emotion—is transient. It’s impossible for you to be happy all the time.
Life’s filled with both negative and positive experiences. And if you think about it, it’s these negative experiences that give the positive ones meaning.
But what I can assure you is that PMO addiction has affected your ability to experience your emotions—especially the positive—to the fullest.
What you will learn
How porn took away your happiness
As it stands, researchers believe that;
- Either high pornography consumption makes you more prone to depression, or
- Being depressed makes you more prone to consuming more and more porn.
Either way, there’s a clear association between pornography consumption and depression.
In a study conducted by Kevin Skinner (Ph.D.), people that reported watching porn three to five times a week were depressed; they scored above 15 on the depression scale.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the group that reported watching porn daily were severely depressed; scoring over 21 on the scale.1
In case you’re wondering how porn can lead to depression, here are some probable reasons;
Your brain doesn’t like Extreme Pleasure
Because we’re naturally programmed to seek sex, the promise of it gets us excited.
When we see something sexual, we feel pleasure.
This excitement and pleasure result from the secretion of a hormone called dopamine.
In a single night, you can watch lots of naked girls having sex more than your ancestors ever saw in their entire lifetimes, combined.
In one single night, you’re able to attain extreme levels of pleasure.
The problem with this picture is that your brain isn’t built to withstand this level of extreme pleasure you get from today’s high-speed porn.
And since your brain isn’t built for this sort of dopamine rush, it autocorrects.
It protects itself!!
So, the brain reduces dopamine receptors in an attempt to regulate your pleasure center. And this automatically leads to an increase in your pleasure baseline.
An increased pleasure baseline implies that the little things in life that used to give you pleasure won’t cut it anymore.
You’ll need to be highly stimulated for you to feel something at all. And as time goes by, if it isn’t porn, it won’t excite you anymore.
PMO addiction increases social anxiety
PMO addiction can put you in a social anxiety loop.
If you’re the type that started using porn because you can’t meet girls, or because you don’t go out of the house much, the dependence on porn increases over time.
As your pornography time increases, the more reclusive you become.
This will, in turn, increase your social anxiety.
Humans are tribal and social animals that crave human contact once in a while.
And the inability to reach out—to expand your tribe; make friends and meet girls—can make you depressed.
Ways that NoFap can make you a happier person
You let negative emotions go on NoFap
Psychologically, porn is a coping mechanism for an underlying negative emotion(s) that you don’t want to face.
You’re using porn to suppress and repress these negative emotions.
But on NoFap, you’re no longer using porn to distract yourself from these negative emotions.
So, at different points on your NoFap journey, these negative emotions will come to the surface. It’s then that you’re able to feel them in their entirety.
This is what people on NoFap experience as mood swings.
But once you stay with these negative emotions and feel them in their entirety, they dissipate. And you feel lighter!!
Once the negative emotions are out of the way, the positive ones can now come up. And you’re also able to feel the positive emotions deeply.
You build up testosterone on NoFap
As a man, you need a functional testosterone system in your body.
This vital hormone is responsible for your ability to feel confident, to be perceived as attractive, and to have a stable mood in situations that are supposed to make you feel anxious.
It’s been shown by studies that jerking off to porn (excessively) is one of the things that messes up your testosterone system.
So, when you go on NoFap, you find that your social anxiety greatly reduces and you’re more confident in social situations.
People start to pick up on this and you’re placed at an advantage to build a healthy social circle.
Your brain corrects for dopamine on NoFap
Over the years, your dopamine-flooded-porn-watching brain has taught you that the only way you can be happy is if you marry a pornstar, have a Lamborghini, and watch hours of the latest porn.
But one vital lesson that NoFap teaches you is that you don’t need much to be truly happy in life.
Because when you go on NoFap and you stop exposing your brain to the high dopamine from porn, your brain begins to rebuild your dopamine receptors.
This makes your brain more receptive to the little things it’s been numb to when you were a PMO addict.
Little things that are supposed to make you feel invigorated, motivated, joyful, accomplished and pleasured.
Little things like walking in nature, walking in a beautiful garden, doing something nice for those you love, appreciating the experience of love, finishing a task, getting an A in school, appreciating the little you have, creativity, the sight of a baby, the bond you and your friends share, listening to a piece of well-composed music, and I can fill this entire post with the little things in life that can make you truly happy.
You can find other amazing NoFap benefits here!!
The NoFap happiness timeline
As I said, NoFap isn’t a straightforward journey.
With NoFap, you don’t get to this happiness land overnight.
These fixes to your brain and body won’t happen overnight.
There’ll be bumps along the line. You’ll have to confront emotions you’ve been afraid to confront in the past.
On NoFap, you would get to experience a rollercoaster of emotions—highs and lows of happiness, boredom, sadness, anger, fear, and so on.
It would be filled with extreme ups and extreme downs till it finally regulates itself.
So, brace yourself!
If I were to come up with a sort of happiness timeline (based on my personal experience), it would look like this:
The extremely happy phase of NoFap
This is usually the first 3 to 7 days of NoFap.
You’ve just started NoFap and you’re filled with energy.
You’re so elated and you feel like you can conquer the world.
The low phase of NoFap
This is the comedown of the initial high you get from starting NoFap.
This phase starts immediately after the extreme happy phase.
It’s at this stage that your brain realizes that you’re trying to kick your porn-watching habit.
So, your brain does everything it can to sabotage your efforts.
It throws some withdrawal symptoms of NoFap your way in the hope that you’ll give up and go back to using porn to cope with your sh*t.
This phase is characterized by nausea, indifference, and depression (for some people).
You feel like sh*t at this stage of NoFap.
And it usually lasts from the 7th day to the 25th day-ish.
The emotional baggage phase of NoFap
This phase usually occurs after the low.
This is when you’re no longer distracting yourself with porn and all the negative emotions start coming up to the surface.
It’s at this stage that you experience highs and lows of emotions. But the negative emotions will be more pronounced.
How long does this phase last?
The duration of this phase depends on what you were using porn to cope with in the first place.
How deep-rooted these emotions are.
At this stage, what you need to do is:
- allow these (negative) emotions to come up,
- feel them, and
- let them go.
Don’t go and substitute porn for another bad habit to distract yourself from your monsters.
The faster you deal with this emotional baggage, the faster you get to happy land.
For most people, this phase lasts from the 25th day-ish to the 60th day-ish.
The happy/rebalanced phase of NoFap
This phase usually starts after 60 days of NoFap.
Note that not everybody gets to this stage. This stage is HUGELY dependent on how you handled your emotional baggage stage.
If you didn’t do any internal work (shadow work), then you might miss out on this stage.
The people that failed to do the internal work to get to this phase are usually those that relapse on
NoFap after they’ve been on it for a very long time.
They’re the people that always have a reason to go back to porn after a long time away from it.
You can learn how to let go of negative emotions on NoFap here!!
Conclusion: Does NoFap make you Happier?
Also, note that the aim of getting to this stage is not necessarily to be happy all the time with everything and everyone you come in contact with.
The significance of getting to this stage is much more about getting to know yourself better. To be in control of your emotions (both the positives and the negatives).
To become emotionally intelligent.
At this stage, the aim is to get your brain rebalanced.
To put it more accurately, to get your brain rebooted.