Sex addiction and porn was a big part of it for me as well. Even sexua| fantasies are stimulating.
Coming from someone who is also addicted to p 0 r n (me), you shouldn't treat it so lightly. It is one of the reasons you are on this forum looking for answers to your health problems. And the more you use p 0 r n, the less chance you have of recovery.
First, you tend to stay stimulated longer with p 0 r n. Surfing for a couple of hours looking for the perfect video to cllmax to. Then the cllmax and itself demands a huge spike in dopamine and epinephrine, which is very draining and hard on your adrenal glands.
And it will also be difficult to recover emotionaly if you think that you are better off with lust instead of love. Lust is not a health promoting emotional state.
I really struggle with it too. I have been using mindfulness and every technique possible to change my thought patterns. p 0 r n also builds a very selfish attitude that women are here for my pleasure. You start to lust over every woman you see. You don't even see them as people anymore.....just something you can use.
Now that I am more aware of my thoughts due to meditation, I can really catch myself falling into these thought patterns. Absolutely no good comes from p 0 r n.
Every orgasm you have puts your body in fight or flight and is training your body to become sympathetic dominant, and drains your adrenal glands. Porn is just worse.
Before I knew about adrenal fatigue, chronic stress, etc. I suspected my excessive masturbation was the problem. In my case, we are talking about everyday for 20 years, sometimes twice per day.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is very familiar with the affects of excessive sexua| activity. Although they blamed it on the loss of "vital fluids". There are some minerals in ejaculate. However, there is much more going on than that. They probably saw it time and time again, but didn't have a complete understanding of the body (TCM text is hundreds of years old)
For me, the first thing to disappear was my libido, and I stumbled upon this site.http://www.actionlove.com/cases/case10878.htm
This was in 2004. This guy, Dr Lin is a total scam artist. He is sort of combining Traditional Chinese Medicine with modern physiology. He sells products that are jam packed with herbs, amino acids, vitamins, hormones, etc. They gave me a quick boost, but then I crashed.
Then I found this forum http://recover.forumup.org/
This forum is a bunch of guys who are experiencing "Sexual Exhaustion". They all have the same symtoms as adrenal fatigue. They all have prostate problems (even the young guys), anxiety, brain fog, skin problems, muscle wasting.......sound familiar !
I also have this old book. I have the 1898 edition. That's not a typo...1898. Writen by a Neurologist.
http://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Neurasthenia-Nervous-Exhaustion-Treatment/dp/114...
It is full of case studies of men who masturbated frequently....as this was long before there was good quality porn ;)
They all have symptoms of prostatits and fatigue. Here is one case study. It's funny how they wrote back then.
"Case VII
A young man, 29 years of age, told me at age 13 that he began the habit of masturbation, and kept it up for 5 years......He confused that he indulged several times per day for 6 years. At the age of 19 involuntary emissions began. At age 22 he began to be very nervous.
His symptoms were cardiac irritability, the heart beating rapidly going up the stairs, getting out of breath even in conversation, dimness of vision, mental depression, defective memory, fear of lightning, drowsiness.."
There are other case studies in the book that list ringing in the ears, insomnia is common, anxiety is very common.
So a long answer to your question.....but yes...even masturbation without porn is bad for you.
There is even one case in the book where the guy said he often practiced "mental masturbation" often. ie constantly fantasizing. I used to do this all the time. I used to love "thinking" myself to an erection. It gives you a small boost of dopamine. A nice free drug.
So even fantasizing is bad for your adrenal glands.
All things in moderation...even for a healthy person. However, you are not healthy, so you can handle even less than a normal person. The dopamine/epiniphrine surge is very hard on you
http://www.reuniting.info/science/sex_in_the_brain
If you continue to masturbate, especially to p 0 r n, your AF will only get worse. There is not much point in avoiding coffee and chocolate if you are using your penis to create a stimulatory affect that is many times more powerful.
Even Dr Lam told me at critical times during my recover "No Sex". So yeah....sexual activity is draining.
During periods when I do have the energy & libido to have sex with my wife, I don't let myself orgasm either. It actually builds bonds.
http://www.reuniting.info/science/coolidge_effect
http://www.reuniting.info/science/oxytocin_health_bonding
The only orgasms I have no are wet dreams !
And again, using p 0 r n takes your mind down a path were you respect women less and less as humans, they become objects.
I use various techniques to turn me off of p 0 r n. For example...consider that a very high percentage of women in the p 0 r n industry were likely sexually abused when they were young. Sexually abused girls are more promiscuous.
http://www.livestrong.com/article/13941-sexual-abuse-and-incest/
So I try to think of these poor girls or young women as having been victimized. This helps me humanize them again and not treat them as objects. I'm still working on this technique ! I need to re-wire a brain that used p 0 r n for ~20 years. It will take some time.
We are each on our own path. Look into it a bit yourself and come to your own conclusions.
Good luck. I hope you can break it.
I think it is one of the hardest addictions to break. Unlike drugs, which is not a natural body function...wanting to have sex is a hard-wired biological function in all humans.
It just gets amplified, reinforced and twisted with p 0 r n. As soon as I knew coffee was bad....I stopped 8 years ago.
I've known for 9 years that p 0 r n and masturbation were stressful, but have had a hard time breaking it. I've only recently felt a much reduced "pull" towards p 0 r n. Maybe it's the Healing Codes....don't know.
The other interesting thing is that when I went through what Dr Lam calls the Honeymoon phase, when I felt like I didn't have adrenal fatigue at all....I actually had NO desire to look at p 0 r n. I believe it was because my body was not looking for the surge in dopamine/epinephrine. Probably because my levels were higher.
What doesn't work, at least not for me, is to try to stop thinking of p 0 r n.
It's like if I tell you...whatever you do, do not think of a Pink Elephant. You just thought of a pink elephant didn't you !
You simply can not stop p 0 r n from popping in your head. How many times have you seen a pretty girl on TV...you get aroused...10 seconds later you are surfing p 0 r n sites. Your mind has just been hijacked by your subconscious.
So what I am trying to do is change my mental associations with p 0 r n. For example, when p 0 r n pops in my head, I make myself think of those poor woman probably being sexually abused when they were young girls, which is why they ended up in p 0 r n. And I don't want to take part in their continued exploitation.
I went to the clinic on Wednesday to see the new doctor. I was experiencing high BP, tachycardia, anxiety, and hypoglycemia, so my cognition was all distorted and it was hard to present my case to him.
That does sound like excess epinephrine (adrenaline) secretion. You can use ashwagandha as natural beta blocker and to support the adrenals. Or balance out the epinephrine by increasing your acetylcholine levels. Lecithin granules or choline bitartrate can be used to elevate acetylcholine levels.
I usually eat only chicken thighs from Safeway brand, but someone got the other brand, and man that chicken made me feel weird. My emotions were all over, etc. It must be all that estrogenic crap soy they feed the chickens.
Chickens are frequently full of estrogens they give farm animals to fatten them up. But soy is not that estrogenic. In fact, phytoestrogens such as those found in soy are on average 200-400 times weaker than the bodies own estrogen, so the phytoestrogens actually block the actions of stronger estrogens:
http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1445903#i
http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1442774#i
http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1548646#i
http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1548672#i
http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1548690#i
It's not that your adrenal glands are too strong. The problem is "pregnenlone steal" and "progesterone steal"
When you are under chronic stress, all the other hormones are sacrificed to make cortisol.
So you may be low in pregnenolone and progesterone. But anything that is available gets shuttled over to cortisol, at the expense of Aldosterone, Estrogen and everything else in the hormone cascade.