The Nofap flatline is a period of complete or partial loss of satisfaction from rewarding experiences caused by abstaining from self-stimulation and/or adult content.
The Nofap flatline occurs when your brain is recovering from no longer receiving the hypernormal stimulus amount of dopamine produced from self-stimulation. A flatline can feel like an intense distance from happiness, motivation, confidence, and optimism. It can feel like the only way to make it stop is to relapse, which is a lie.
Experiencing a flatline is experiencing the withdrawals from hypernormal dopamine releases of self-stimulation and adult content; no different than a withdrawal from drugs.
Going through the flatlines is the cost to get back to a dopamine-rewarding life.
The most common periods of Flatline occur:
1. The first three days
2. The second week
3. End of month one
4. Mid and end of month two
It takes around 90 days for most people to feel like they are back to having increased dopamine sensitivity. A 90-day abstinence period may be helpful to assess your habits with self-stimulation and adult content. If you cannot reach 90 days or even less days, it may be something worth thinking about in relation to your objectives.
Adult content and self-stimulation causes massive dopamine spikes. These hypernormal stimuli can make it hard for you to detect small dopamine spikes from small, crucial, stepping-stone wins that drive you to pursue greater wins and rewards.
By massively spiking your dopamine with inauthentic sexual experiences, you make it more difficult to feel the small pleasures in life. Feeling rewarded for pursuing your goals is crucial to maintain and increase spiritual strength and desire for mastery.
Being sensitive to dopamine is important. A low tolerance.
Below are methods to beat the Nofap flatine.
Change your environment
Changing your environment is one of the best ways to beat a nofap flatline and prevent a relapse. Get away from the place where you normally self-stimulate. Go on a walk, or go to the gym. REWARD yourself for not giving in to the temptation and get coffee out or something else. Reward the behavior you want to encourage in yourself.
Going outside is always a good idea. Being in the sun. Sunlight is shown to increase dopamine production. Being surrounded by plant life. Hiking, running through the woods, being away from the city and feeling the comforting blanket of solitude.
High Intensity Training
High-intensity training releases endorphins like dopamine. High intensity training in pursuit of any kind of mastery in the domain of body will make you feel better and release built-up energy and drive. Hard training makes you feel better.
You must adopt a path to mastery for the body to pursue when you need to life your spirits.
Meditate or breathing exercises
A Nofap Flatline can come with negative self-talk in your mind. Your mind needs conditioning. You must destroy all negative self-talk to stay leading your mind, instead of being lead by it. The mind leading is anxiety & depression. Destroying negative self-talk is a tenet.
Breathing and meditation helps calm the mind and release feelings/energy/vibes /anger/etc. that have attached themselves to you that you want to remove.
Hang out with Friends
If you don’t have friends, you need to make friends. Hanging out with friends is shown to increase positive chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and more. It’s beneficial to have active hobbies with friends like going to the gym or joining a recreational sports league.
Having productive hobbies with friends is crucial. Productive things across body, mind, and spirit. Exercise together, study, build a business, explore an idea, travel, etc. Use friendship to improve the group and the individual.
Hanging out with friends obviously prevents any type of relapse.
Get out of bed as soon as possible
It’s important to get out of bed as soon as possible. To start strong with a morning primer, as opposed to looking through social media on the phone which can lead to negative behaviors. An easy way to accomplish this is to not sleep with your phone; sleep with it out of reach so that you have to leave your bed to retrieve it.
Wait
The best thing to do in many situations, is to wait. To do nothing. This can cause panic because it can feel like things are out of our control.
Because we – let go – we are in control.
“I can wait, I can fast, I can think.” Said Marcus Aurelius.
The Nofap Flatline will pass. It can be beaten.
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22 comments
Man this arricle is just so brilliant. I am in 15-20 day timeline of the first month and its so tuff. I feel like a dead meat with no willingness to do anything. To stop PMO i even quitted my bedroom and sleeping in hall 😀 but yeah i think i need to change the environment to overcome flatline. Its worst, thanks mate. I am also looking forward to read your other articles as well. Keep writing .
Glad you found it. Life feels better without masturbation to many people.
You need to reach all young men and teenagers… to let them know and realise the other perspective. Was emphasized as Brahmacharya in Ancient Hindu culture , and religiously practised , has now been replaced by contemporary Western thoughts.. porn , masturbation and unbridled sex is the order of the day …. this needs to be revisited.
This is akin to drug addiction cannot be overemphasised
Thanks for the endeavour.
Thanks for sharing. I want to research what you mentioned. More content is coming. I’m taking a short break while in school.
I AM CURRENTLY ON FLATLINE !! DAY 18 .. I AM DEPRESSED .. I FEEL HOLLOW INSIDE. I KNOW I AM GOING THROUGH REWIRING PROCESS WHICH MIGHT TAKE SOME MORE TIME .. I STILL GOT SOME EARLY BENEFITS – MORE FOCUS, NEED LESS SLEEP , BETTER CONCENTRATION BUT FLATLINE IS ACTUALLY HARD .. I AM FEELING ALL TIME LOW .
ONWARD INTO GREATNESS.
THE JOURNEY IS DARKEST BEFORE IT’S END.
QUITTING IS DEFEAT | FAILURE IS A FIGHT
Now the day 323 of my NoFap journey. It’s damn hard to move forward when it’s flatline comes to me at 2-4 month. But! I survive this! With God’s help, i make thigs go forward. And from than – the new me, come’s to my body and my soul! Thanks everyone who bring this knowledge to mens!
Have any of you felt extremely tired during the flatline period? Like your feel very tired, your heart beating so fast, shortness on breath, etc. I have read the forum about the nofap withdrawal symptoms and seems like some guys experience severe symptoms during their journey to stop their addiction.
Most experience adverse side-affects when stopping. It’s theorized that it has to do with the dopamine drought where normally Fapping would create a dopamine surplus in the brain. So you don’t feel reward chemicals when you stop fapping. Once you reset, you’ll feel dopamine from things you used to love again.
Man…I got a dopamin surge when you mentioned Jordan Peterson’s self authoring program…..I am a fellow fan of him too…..Thanks for the info too👍
We are happy you found something you liked in the article.
I am 18. I have been addicted to **** since i was probably 14. I have been on a nofap journey for nearly 31 days now. I feel… Alive right now. My self esteem has sky rocketed and i have realised the more i keep myself away from lewd stuff the easier it is for me. Workout helps significantly to overcome pmo. But flatline sucks i won’t lie. It’s really really hard at time to keep going. Sometimes it feels what is the point of doing this? Many of my friends fap regularly and are still active and lively, but i am doing this for me and quitting **** and fap is going to be the biggest challenge of my life but i am ready to take it head on. Enough cowering and lazing ,it’s time to actually overcome for real! Thank you for such an amazing post! You are really helping the youngsters by showing us the right path!
Ash,
Your words are touching. We are so grateful you shared them with us. It brings me a tremendous amount of joy that Nofap is improving your life. You are the amazing one, not us. Please, do not give up. You can do this. We believe in you.
Hey, this was actually very interesting and helpful to read, thank you very much for sharing the knowledge.
I am officially starting my Nofap journey today, let’s see how it goes.
O.
Good luck.
Great article! Thank you very much. I’m on Day 6 though. Wish me best!
Thank You! Very much!
I stumbled across this article looking for assistance overcoming **** addiction of 30+ years. I don’t know who I am without out but sex is impossible, so I must change and rid myself of this disease. Honestly, I’d rather have the real thing than pictures and video. As I write this I’m only on day 1, so I’ve got a very long way to go. I’m determined. Wish me success!
You got this for sure! Stay diligent, train the body hard to get out excess energy.
THANK YOU SO MUCH MAN. IM ON DAY 11, THE FLATLINE IS HITTING HARD, FEARED POSSIBILITY OF RELAPSED THEN FOUND YOU. YOURE A LIFE SAVER
You’re doing great man keep it up.