First Month Complete of Reboot (Questions)

[Cyrus]

Long story short, I started PMO at 14 to HPI and as the title my suggest I just quit and started to reboot a month ago. (I am now 21 years old.) I would do the deed 1-6 times a day. A DAY. Often or not it was usually 1-3 or at least just once. Rarely would I take a few days break but if I did it was bc I had PMO so much that even my body needed a break from that before going at it again. Growing up gay, I didn't have many options or chances for sexual encounters which is how my PMO addiction started - By default, I figured I'd just take care of my urges myself. Nowadays I have my first real relationship which has lead me to discover my PIED and lack of sex drive (Libido) for that matter. Now that I am now educated, I realized that I was never truly "horny" behind the screen, just an addicted whose brain needed a fix.

Knock on wood, but even with my extreme case of porn addiction, my 1st month hasn't been that bad. I relapsed my 2nd week and viewed porn. (Only viewed, not touching or anything else) but other than that I don't have too many issues to report. My question is, just how much can dreams and thoughts set my rebooting back? 9/10 nights since my rebooting I will have strong sexual dreams to the point sometimes I "feel" pleasure in my dreams. Hell, I once dreamed of legitly being on a computer watching porn only to wake up thanking god it didn't happen and I didn't relapse. As far as thoughts go, more recently, I've noticed that as I lay in bed at night, trying to sleep, my mind will reply some of my favorite porn situations that are now burned into my memory and my penis does react to it. Not huge throbbing erections or anything but enough where it wakes him up and he just wants release (My brain crying for a taste of dopimine.) Now I'm not worried about giving in, but I'm just worried about how much these thoughts at night are setting me back.... thanks.

(Note: I will be posting this in the Porn Addiction and Journal forum as well.)

 

[OSS]

Unfortunately there is not much that can be done about dreams. Being an experienced wet dreamer myself (sounds ridiculous) I've come to learn the only thing that seems to be helpful is to completely cut off any fantasy and triggers at night. I avoid using the computer too late at night because if I see a pop up of even a low grade bikini photo, fantasies get triggered and it's literally a 50/50 chance of having a wet dream that night. If you start to fantasize uncontrollably at night distract yourself, with something very distracting... Cold showers are usually the silver bullet.

As for how much fantasy and wet dreams can set you back.. Well no one really knows but studies have shown that simply thoughts and cues of the participants addictions are enough to activate some of the addiction pathways. As for dreams, the stress worry about it is probably worse than the actually affect of the dream. In my experience it doesn't have a huge impact, just seems to kind of hide the progress you've been making for a few days.