The Pleasure Response and Me

After reading this article: "Day 64: Successful, great, normal sex" I started to think about my sex life, such as it is, in a new way. I use porn occasionally, but fantasize a lot. I've also been reading Keith Richards about Heroin addiction and why you suffer so much getting off it - it floods the endorphin receptors in the brain which then stops making it's own. So when you stop taking heroin it takes 72 hours to reboot the brain to make it's own endorphins. Something similar happens with orgasm and the pleasure processing circuits in the brain. I dabbled in the Gupta Amygdala Retraining program last year which is about treating an overloaded fight/flight response (as I understand it). So all of these are related to over-stimulation of various brain modules or circuits which interrupts natural functioning.

What occurred to me is that I cannot remember the last time I had a natural erection. I can give myself one, and I don't having too much problem reaching orgasm, but from day to day I don't get them spontaneously. From what I've read each orgasm has quite long lasting effects on the brain and especially the pleasure response. Even once a day orgasm with fantasy or porn to artificially stimulate sexual response dulls the pleasure response. The man in the article suffered from erectile dysfunction - and I gather this is quite common.

So at the moment I'm refraining from fantasy and masturbation. I'm not making a decision to be celibate, though I'm seriously thinking about it for the first time in my life. But I'm trying to avoid fantasising and artificial stimulation. Let's see what happens. After three nights of no fantasies and no masturbation, I still have not had a spontaneous erection during the day.

I'm also feeling more concerned about my addiction to chocolate now. If I cut down I get headaches and feel lousy and miserable. I got up to a bar and a half of dark chocolate (150g) for a while - and I'm paying for this out of my benefit. It's crazy. So I'm cutting down to one bar for a start. I can't tackle everything at once. I'll see how it goes, but I'd like to be free not to eat chocolate. Any reduction in my intake takes about 2 weeks to adjust to - it's much worse than coffee! (and coffee is no substitute)!

I want also to look at my food more generally. I've been having bad stomach problems including one ambulance call out because of extreme pain! I'm getting it all looked at, and being pretty careful about what I eat. But my diet succumbed some time ago (I never recovered from Christmas basically). High glycemic index foods cause a major impact on the body. I'm putting on weight again, because I'm over eating and not sticking the guidelines for healthy eating.

The trouble is getting through the stress caused by the change. So one thing at a time, and baby steps! But I'm concerned that this phenomenon of over stimulation might be having a major impact on me. Basically I'm easily stimulated. There's not a great deal of difference between the various kinds of arousal - difficult to physiologically tell fear from anger for instance as they involve the same hormones, and other autonomic responses. Perhaps if I can reduce the over stimulation from various sources I might find it has a overall beneficial effect on my Fibromyalgia too.