How erection works on the brain: Motivation, Life Style, Dopamine and Porn.

I am writing this thread to tell my story and give all Thunders a light over our brains. Most of us have no idea of what is happening inside our brains when we are aroused and, we don’t know the consequences of overdoing sex stimulation.

I will try to explain some of the most important system of our brain: The Reward Path and how it’s connected to our erections.

Reward Path is responsible for our motivation on everything: Willingness to travel, learn new things, work hard, evolve as human being… and, of course, sex desire. This system triggers habits creation, good ones and bad ones. Habits can become addictions, especially if our brain feels rewarded by our actions.

I won’t be scientific, but there are many information over the internet and it’s all very detailed. Brain functionalism is just too complicated.

Before we start, read my story on the next post:

Original thread: I need a sincere advice PE and ED

My ED started when I was 26. Healthy guy, sports practitioner (gym, soccer, muay thai…) normal sex life, normal erection, regular and happy guy.

By that time I three bad things happened in my life. Lost my job, lost my girl, lost my car on an accident. An accident that didn’t hurt me at all, not even a scratch. All that happened in the same month, July.

Not that these things don’t happen all the time everywhere with everybody, but after that my life turned upside down. I couldn’t get a job, I couldn’t pay my bills, I was always at that almost stage. Hitting door to door and receiving negatives all the time. Erections? Veeery good!

Depression came, without money, without friends, without a good company and beginning to believe that the guy I’m is lesser than the guy I thought I was. At this stage, porn came as a relief, an escape route, and I developed a compulsive behavior.

I didn’t realize big changes in my erection, I was not paying attention really. The only thing I notice, is that I was cumming differently. I didn’t care.

By the end of that goddamn year, I was trying to move on and I had my first sex opportunity in months. My erection came fast and hard as usual, but it didn’t stand. It vanishes during the foreplay. It was the first time I fail. Did I worry? No. This kind of things happens. I had a though year.

Next year, the things got worst. Many debts, still no job and masturbating more and more and more. My erections were weaker; the solution was looking for more extreme and hardcore content. I don’t think I realized that by that time. Now it’s pretty easy to see the mistakes I did.

Another sex opportunity. Completely fail. And again and again and again…

I was desperate, running to every doctor I could find… No exam could explain, I was 27, healthy, but couldn’t have an erection. The doppler ultrasound exam just showed I was unable to hold my blood inside the penis.

I was completely addicted already. I just didn’t know it was an addiction. Desiring sex is natural, right?

It took me a year to start taking pills, and, well, from ED to superman in 40 minutes. I could live with that.

My porn compulsive behavior was established, but now, I was confident that I could even impress a woman with an outstanding stamina.

5 years passed. I was working, dating the most beautiful woman I ever know and “confident” again. I never really healed, but I learned to live with my insecurities. Pills were part of my life as much as my arms and… porn.

Last year I got a new upside down. Life being life and me being me. Single again, no perspective of future and masturbating more than 10 times a day.

In months I couldn’t have an erection, even with pills. Also, I forced so much to get an erection that I develop a premature ejaculation (masturbating with soft penis trying to get hard). That is it… suicidal thoughts.

My luck is that I found someone that know me from the times I was a “superman”. Someone that doesn’t care about anything else than help me retake my life. Thanks to this beautiful new girlfriend I’m still alive.

I went to doctors all over again. This time the doppler exam was a disaster. I took three shots of injection for ED, and my penis didn’t get erect. Neither the most aggressive medication worked. I was in a queue for penile implant.

Researching desperately about the implants I discover Thunders and, also a book that has nothing to do with PE or implants, but with addiction.

The book is: Your brain on porn: the new science of addiction.

https://www.ama … /dp/B00N2AH8NW/

I read it, and boom! Every symptom I had over 6 year were there. First, having difficult to cum (I could have sex for hours and hours and hours without cumming. It was just hard). Along with that, the need to more extreme content to get aroused, the failures with women, the increasing of social anxiety, stress, lack of purpose… everything, even getting premature ejaculation by forcing an erection. Not only the physical things, but the psychological behavior as well. It seems that most of my life was symptoms described in the book.

It’s a new study, because porn was never free as it is today. Never before in human history, the abuse of sexual arousal happened like it happens today. Before 2000, there are no xvideos, redtube, sexmaxx… want porn? You have to buy it, and it was not online!

I decided to try. What can I lose? And I found that quitting a porn addiction is hard. Because it’s not porn that my brain wants, it’s dopamine. It’s almost as hard as leaving cocaine addiction. I have periods of abstinence reactions. Stress, depression, shaking hands… all the time my brain is hurting me as hard as it can so I finally give up and give what my brain needs. Dopamine!

To leave addiction I started two treatments. Psychological and psychiatry. One is trying to give me a new meaning in life, another is giving me medication to lower my brain needs for dopamine.

Finally, I’m quitting porn and, as explained in the book, very very very slowly I’m getting my erections back. I still need pills, but I get hard and have sex.

But it’s not easy. I fall times to times. Every fall resets the treatment. I don’t know if I will succeed, I’m just fighting.

Even nocturnal erection and morning wood was lost (after six years I don’t even remember the feeling). It’s also explained in the book. The system that controls erections is a sole independent system. For the brain there is no difference from porn to, dreams, to imagination, to real sex life. It’s all controlled by the same system. Anything that triggers this system causes an erection. Doesn’t matter if it’s an arousal or boost in testosterone, that happens in the morning.

Before the studies of porn addiction, science believed that psychological ED was caused only by a kind of blocking, like extreme insecurity or depression. But addiction is a different process that happens in brain, it’s not 100% psychological. Its a chemical mess on the reward path of the brain. There is a lot of things we can discuss about that. I’ll be happy to do so. If guys here wants, I open a new thread to discuss reward path, sexual arousal, ed and dopamine.

I truly recommend for everyone. Stop porn, at least read that book.

Brains have a smart system that give us motivation to do things. This system runs under Dopamine and it give us a sense of urgency and power to take actions.
The more dopamine we have, more willing we have to take an action. For example: We consciously decide that having a beautiful body is important to us. Maybe because someone did a joke about our weight or just because we wanna be able to conquer the hot crossfit girl next door. Once we decided it’s really important to us, just by thinking on the activity itself, we feel more motivated to do it. Don’t you ever feel that? I decided that PE is important to me and I became motivated to read a lot about it, write long texts and interact with other guys that has more experience than me. I EVEN SHOWED MY DICK IN A FORUM!!!!

So what is going on? The brain is releasing Dopamine on the reward system to motivate us. Also, every time we reach the objective, it releases more dopamine. This cycle help us a lot and, after a while, it becomes a pattern. By becoming a pattern, this motivation isn’t conscious anymore. Anything that triggers the reward; getting stronger by workouts; knowing a different culture, changing mood by listen music, relaxing at coffee space at work… whatever we do, we just start doing without thinking. THIS is a habit!!!

Here is a good example of motivation cycle: When we start PE, we can have gains or not. I’m sure that guys that are fast gainers are more willing to keep pe than guys that aren’t. We don’t need to pole that, our brains works just like this. We are being successful in whatever activity we do, the tendency is that we keep doing it. Otherwise, the dopamine doesn’t increase, it decreases, and with that, we feel less motivated.
So, our brain reacts under dopamine, but this is not that simple. Each stimulation creates it’s on path through neurons… it’s complex and I’m not an expert. Just read some books and lots of materials over the web.

We have many natural rewards that are not conscious, like eat, sleep, reproduce… Some activities releases a lot of dopamine, others not that much. The more dopamine the activity releases on our brain, more we are motivated and happier we feel.

Knowing that, we can understand why some people have so many difficulties to control weight. Every time something stressful happens, they eat. They are not hungry; they just need dopamine to feel more motivated and happy. Once it becomes a habit, they eat without knowing why. It’s not conscious anymore.

Now, think in the evolution of species; the ones that survived are the ones that have more willing to reproduce.

Reproduction is the base of a specie continuation. In every specie, sex stimulation releases TONS of dopamine in the brain. That’s why it’s so fucking good, that’s why selling strategies uses sex every time. That’s why we keep talking about sex everywhere. Because our brain receives TONS of dopamine to keep us reproducing.

The anticipation of an activity (thinking in doing something), already releases dopamine. The anticipation of having sex releases TONS of dopamine, The activity itself is much more dopaminergic. The dopamine releasing only stops when we cum. Cuming releases another neurotransmiter (sorry guys, I don’t recall the name of this one). This one give us the sensation of completion and relaxation and finally stops the dopamine release.

Here is where the things becomes nasty. The human evolution wasn’t an orgy party. We were nomads and sex was scarce. Human brains didn’t evolve by having sex every time, everywhere. On contrary, human brains evolved to take advantage of every sex opportunity possible, because it’s scarce and only the reproductive ones passed to the next generation. The biggest evidence is the quantity of dopamine released when we are aroused.

Is our brain prepared to have too much sex with too much women in an absurd frequency? No, human brain didn’t evolved in this situation at all. What happens with drink too much alcohol very often? What happens if we smoke too much weed very often? What happens if we take too much cocaine very often?… We get used to it.

Brains has the ability of protect itself. It becomes resistant. Resistant to alcohol, cocaine, weed, everything. Actually, our whole body becomes resistant. Start training at the gym and see your resistance rising up.

By overdoing sex stimulation, we are overdoing the dopamine releases in brain. The consequence is that our brain becomes resistant to dopamine as any other drug. When this happens, it triggers many silent consequences.

Remember the motivation cycle? Think in a brain that is getting resistant to dopamine. What do you think will happen to our life if we slowly lose the willingness? It’s so silent, so slow, but it will come. Feeling motivated to hang out with friends, feeling motivated to know new people, feeling motivated to study, feeling motivated to go to the gym, feeling motivated to organize a trip… The decrease on motivation is slow, very slow. We didn’t realize that till we look back and remember how easy things were in the past.

If we keep shooting dopamine in the brain, it will become more and more resistant. Pictures of naked girls don’t get us aroused anymore, we need videos. Strip tease videos don’t get us aroused anymore, we need lesbian videos. Lesbian videos don’t get us aroused anymore, we need to see penetration. Vaginal videos don’t work anymore, we need anal. Anal don’t work, we need BSDM… Women don’t work anymore!!!

And what about real sex?? Well this is all connected. Our brain simply doesn’t know the difference between real sex, dreams, imagination, pornography. Every new interaction works as a new sex partner. If you watch 4 videos on xvideos in a single masturbation shot, your brain will register 4 sexual interactions. Even more if the video has more than one climax. Even more if you skip the parts you don’t want to see and go directly to the climax…

Of course, real sex has different stimulation, like smell, skin touch, eye contact… But overtime, the brain will become so resistant to dopamine, that it doesn’t matter anymore.

I’m exploring an abuse of dopamine. Porn can be instructive and relaxing, but it’s like alcohol. No problem in drinking, but if you do everyday, especially if do it for different purposes, like drinking to sleep better. One day you will be addicted. Use with moderation.

And if you think that your life is not in order, that there is lack of motivation and confidence. Reflect about your masturbation habits. No fap is a real deal. as much as PE.

Do you think too much edging can cause some type of ED?

Hi jelqmaster.

Definitely!! It’s already discussed at nofap forums.

While edging, the brain is constantly releasing dopamine. If you don’t cum, the brain doesn’t stop releasing dopamine. And if you stop masturbation without cum, this dopamine will stand at your brain for a longer time.

Edging is an awesome technique, but if you feel you are having weaker erections, stop all forms of masturbation for a while. The brain has a slow recovering time. You won’t feel a difference in days, you need at least feel weeks. For a high dependency problem like mine, it’s needed more than 3 months of rebooting.

Stop for a FULL week and evaluate your erection. It should be a little better or much better depending on how “demaged” your brains is.

If you don’t need pills and you just want to feel the best of your cock, 15 days should make a huge difference. Based on my personal experience.

Interesting, I think this is what causing for me my ED, I said about it a little here: I don’t know if this is a type of ED but need some help

But I didn’t said about edging, thanks.

Your description is very much like where I’m standing now. Even with pills, I need a manual stimulating to maintain the erection. Buts it’s getting better little by little and I can really feel it’s getting better over the weeks.

Maybe you are having premature ejaculation by forcing your blood inside the penis. Overtime, your brain gets used to it, making it even worse.

My recommendation is, stop all forms of masturbation, especially edging. I know you are edging to have more control on ejaculation, but now, move your focus to kegels, and only the exercises you don’t need to get hard.

If you don’t have diabetes, or any other blood thickening like high cholesterol, you may be in this situation where the brain isn’t responding to dopamine properly. The first thing you need is stop this high dopamine release by sex stimulation. Save your energy for the real thing.

You will probably feel some hardness gains after two weeks. Maybe, to have a morning wood, you also need a full brain reboot, which takes months.

One thing I guarantee. If you can have a good erection with the minimum amount of arousal, it will be much easier to control ejaculation. If you need too much stimulation to get hard, you are also too near to climax.

Now, there is a trick everyone should know about nofap.

When you start, your brain is used to a dopamine routine. When it stops, things gets more unbalanced. Somedays you will feel great that everything is working and others you will feel that nothing works at all (YOU WILL wish to stop this and masturbate again), anyway, you will not escape from the flatline.

Flatline is a period that you feel your cock is dead. It will be very hard to get an erection. It will come, but it is a strange feeling. Normaly it happens at the first month and it endures one or more weeks.

It’s just like a car that doesn’t start at a cold day. You try, try try till it starts. When it starts, normal life, but it’s hard to make it work.

I highly recommend reading the book. Everything is detailed explained.

Give us a feedback in few weeks to tell how things are working to you.

Question me anything you like. I hope I can help.

Brgds

Very interesting topic, thanks for sharing

The problems is, I’m doing a girth routine, and I really need to get erect. But even without my routine I do edging all the time ( stopped right now). But yeah, its hard for me do get erect (to 80%).

So after the flatline what happens? Need to ejaculate to feel your dick “alive”?

Nothing relate to ejaulation. It is a problem with the arousal capability. It pass, really pass, but when you are at flatline, it’s hard to get an erection… even on the flatline, everything works, just have to be more patience

Regarding the routine. I won’t do nothing that forces an erection. No jelqs at all for me. Only stretches.

I’m saving every drop of energy for the sex. I will only go back to jelqs after I’m 100% healed of ED.

So do you think would be good, back to the lenght routine just doing stretches?

I cannot say what’s best for you. But I can say that, everytime men have an erection, there are some brain activities based on dopamine.

If you feel that your erections aren’t that good it could be a lot of things, including low responsiveness to dopamine.

I don’t know many ways to identify if it’s your case. With me it was a no explained ED. No medic could tell me what was going wrong. But maybe you have diabetes or so…

If you wanna try this brain reconditioning, I can assure; it only works if you stop for real. You won’t force an erection for nothing. No jelqing, no erect pumps, no masturbation, no sexual thoughts… just forget you have a cock.

You can have sex, it helps keeping your brain focus in the right spot… but don’t do it too often at the beginning.

Give a 2 weeks brake to your cock and mind. Stop PE as well. Evaluate your erections after that.

Going back to PE may require a good understanding of your body reactions. Good erections, good to go. Erections not that good, time to heal. Morning wood is an important PI. Maybe you should focus on having a healthy EQ first.

It is what I’m doing. I’m focused on having my EQ back. Not even stretches right now. Why not? Because I can’t evaluate my EQ. What if I’m overdoing the exercises? How would I know??