← Dr. Trish Leigh Podcast
Dr. Trish Leigh Podcast
Episode #223: How Long Does It Take To Recover From A Porn Addiction?
00:21:32
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
You know, a question I get asked all the time, the most. How long is it going to take to quit pornography and fully recover genuinely? How long? How long until I feel normal again? Until my sex drive comes back? Until I can stop thinking about it or fantasizing? How long until I stop feeling anxious, irritable, angry or having constant urges? How long until I actually will enjoy real intimacy again? And I get why people ask. Because if you've struggled with pornography for a while, and especially if you've decided, okay, enough, I am done, there's usually this expectation that once you stop, everything should just snap back into place, like, cool, I quit, guess I'm all fixed now. But then something strange happens. For some people, a few days go by, maybe even a few weeks, and instead of feeling amazing like you hoped you would, you feel off, flat, disconnected. Your motivation tanks and your libido disappears, sometimes completely. You might feel more anxious for no reason at all, or maybe, and this one catches a lot of people off guard, you stop watching porn, but somehow you feel even worse than before. This episode is brought to you by my Harper Collins published book, Mind Over Explicit Matter. Learn how artificial stimulation miswires your brain and what you can do to rewire it back to purpose, intimacy and connection. Go to Dr. Trishleigh.com book. That's the moment when most people panic. They start asking themselves scary questions. What have I done to myself? What if this is permanent? What if I am just wired this way now? But here's what almost nobody explains. Recovery is not usually linear. And more importantly, recovery is not just about pornography. It is about dopamine regulation. That's the part that nobody's talking about. Okay, so people want a timeline. 30 days, 90 days, 6 months. Some magic number where somebody rings a bell and says, congratulations, your brain has been officially healed. But brains don't really work like that. So. So that whole 90 day reset thing, while it can be very helpful for some people, it also has a lot of people really confused. Because some people feel dramatically better in just a few weeks. Some people take months. And there is a very good reason for that. Some people quit and they actually feel terrible for a while. They feel worse before they feel better. There's a reason for that. It's not usually about time. It's about something else entirely. That's the part that especially freaks some people out, because nobody warns them that there might be this weird middle part of recovery, the part where your brain goes quiet. And actually, this reminds me of a gentleman that I worked with. We'll Call him Jake. Jake had this number in his head. 90 days. That was the goal. He had read online about it and that it was important. He watched videos about the 90 day reset. He saw people talking about how life completely changed after this 90 day period. And somewhere along the way, 90 days stopped becoming a checkpoint, but became a finish line instead. Like, if you could just white knuckle it long enough, everything would magically click back into place. So for him, at first, things were improving. He was sleeping better. He had more energy. He started feeling more confident. He even told me, I feel more present. He was excited. Around day 60 or 70, something shifted. He started feeling hopeful, like maybe this thing had finally lost its grip on him. But then day 90 came, and nothing hugely dramatic happened. No big breakthrough, no fireworks, no magical switch flipped in his brain. And actually, he felt kind of flat because of that. And what made it worse was the expectation, because he thought, wait, this was supposed to be the moment. This was the day he was supposed to feel better. And instead he. He felt restless. He was disconnected and kind of emotionally off. What he didn't realize at the time is that his brain was recalibrating, but it was still in process. He had expected to be fixed on that day, so he interpreted discomfort as failure. That distinction matters. A week later, he had a stressful day at work. He fought with his partner. He couldn't sleep. He. And suddenly his brain reached for that old familiar thing to make him feel better. Not because 90 days didn't work, but because stress met a dysregulated nervous system and he relapsed. And the thing he said afterward really struck me. He said, I thought I ruined everything. But what was actually happening was that he learned something really, really important. The goal was never 90 days. The goal was regulation. That's because recovery isn't can I survive long enough? Recovery, in fact, is can I build a brain that no longer needs artificial stimulation for soothing and engagement or to regulate my mood? A brain that can regulate its own from the inside out. And once it's. He stopped obsessing over streaks, something changed. He started to look at the whole picture. His sleep, his stress levels, the amount that he scrolled, late night stimulation, Instagram, fantasy energy, loneliness, tiredness. And eventually, he realized something uncomfortable. But honestly, once you realize it, it's incredibly freeing. Pornography wasn't the only dopamine source that kept him stuck. And. And that's when recovery actually started moving forward quickly. Honestly, I think we're asking the wrong question. Culturally, everybody wants to know, is porn the problem, but maybe a better question is this. What happens to a brain that has no time to be bored again? Think about modern life. Think about how strange it is for a second. Your grandfather, he. He had to leave the house to go gamble for some stimulation. Now somebody can lose $500 in bed while half watching Netflix. You used to have to wait an entire week for entertainment, Saturday morning cartoons. Now there are infinite videos, infinite scrolling, infinite sports betting, infinite stimulation around the clock. At two in the morning you can sit there with six tabs open, watching highlights, checking fantasy scores, scrol Instagram, looking at attractive people online, half listening to a podcast, ordering food, texting somebody back. All while your nervous system is basically screaming at you. More, more, more. And then we wonder why normal real world life feels dull. Why motivation crashes and intimacy is harder than ever. Why why your focus is disappearing while sitting still. Why does that feel uncomfortable? Honestly? Vegas used to be a destination, right? What happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas. Not anymore. Now it's everywhere. Now the casino lives in your pocket. And it's not just gambling. Everything became the big dopamine machine. Social media figured out how to keep you scrolling. Sports betting figured out how to keep you chasing anticipation. Porn figured out how to make novelty endless. Even YouTube, if we're being honest, knows exactly how to keep you clicking. And this is where I think a lot of men get confused. Because they quit one thing, but they stay inside the exact same, same stimulation lifestyle. And then they wonder why their brains still feel fried. Because if your nervous system has been living at a volume 11 plus on a 10 point scale, normal real world life is not at that volume level. It's lower and it feels broken. But maybe it's not broken. Maybe it's just quieter. And that quiet, that's the part a lot of people have no ability to tolerate anymore. But here's what's fascinating. Most people think that the problem is pleasure. It's not. The brain gets incredibly activated by anticipation. Andrew Huberman talks a lot about how anticipation is really the currency of dopamine. The maybe, Cha Ching the next click, Cha Ching the next video, Cha Ching the next swipe right, Cha Ching. That moment of maybe this one. That's the dopamine territory. And this matters because dopamine isn't really the pleasure chemical like people say. It's more like the motivation chemical, the pursuit chemical, the anticipation chemical. It's what drives the seeking. And over time, if your brain gets used to high intensity stimulation over and over and over again, regular life can start to feel so Muted. And it's not just porn. This is where things get uncomfortable. Because pornography rarely exists alone. Usually there's scrolling gaming binges, sports betting, endless YouTube rabbit holes, watching hot girls online f fantasy loops, constant stimulation, constant over stimulation. It's like the nervous system never fully gets to power down. And here's where people accidentally self sabotage. They sabotage themselves because they quit porn, but they replace it with seven other dopamine hits. Now they're gambling on sports every night, scrolling until one in the morning, or watching reels for three hours, looking at thirst traps on Instagram, living in fantasy all day long. And then they wonder, why do I feel so dysregulated? Because the circuitry is still being fed just through different spoons. And this is where I think recovery gets misunderstood. People think recovery means I stopped watching porn. But think about this better question with me for a second. The real question is, did my brain relearn regulation? Because those two things are not the same. You can stop the behavior and still have a nervous system that is stuck in the same loop, still overstimulated, reward seeking, still emotionally avoidant, still disconnected from real life. And honestly, this is where people get frustrated with recovery, because there are phases. Nobody likes phases. Everybody wants a very quick finish line. But let's talk about the phases. The first phase, usually within the first few weeks, is where cravings hit restlessness, mood swings. Your brain kind of throws a tantrum because it got used to a very predictable source of stimulation and now it's gone. You took it away. That is a very uncomfortable part. Then there's the weird middle phase. Honestly, this is where the dysregulation hits the hardest, during the recalibration of the brain, because life feels really boring and boring feels unbearable. This actually reminds me of another guy I talked to, a different story than Jake. He said something that really stuck, stuck with me. He said, I didn't realize how bad it was until I sat down to relax. This is what I said to him. What do you mean? He replied, I tried to watch a football game and I realized I couldn't just sit there and watch the game the way he described it would be funny to most, but honestly, it's very concerning to me. And it's especially concerning because. Because it has become so normalized. He had the game on phone in hand, checking fantasy stats, scrolling Instagram during commercials, looking at sports betting odds, half listening to a podcast, texting a whole bunch of people, randomly opening YouTube, sometimes door dashing food in another tab. And then he stopped and he had this strange moment. I don't know if you've ever had a moment like this. It's almost an epiphany of sorts. He thought to himself, wait a minute. What am I doing? Can I not even sit here and do one thing that I enjoy just one thing at a time anymore? Honestly, that question hit him harder than quitting porn did. Because he realized pornography wasn't the only thing hijacking his attention. His entire nervous system had got trained to expect constant stimulation, constant novelty, and especially constant anticipation. And when he tried to sit still or just watch TV or even just relax, his brain interpreted quiet as discomfort. And this is the part that nobody explains that well. When people say life feels boring after quitting, sometimes, what they actually mean is, my nervous system forgotten how to tolerate normal amounts, healthy amounts of focus and relaxation. You suddenly realize how much stimulation you were relying on, and emotions start showing up. Stress, loneliness, disappointment, shame, relationship issues. Stuff you maybe weren't feeling before because you were numbed out, or at least you weren't feeling them fully. What's fascinating is a lot of people realize something pretty uncomfortable at this point. And I really want you to think about this. Porn may not be the main issue for you. It's likely the coping strategy. That's a hard realization. I know it. Because once you realize it, the question becomes, okay, what am I actually avoiding? Food for thought, my friend. But with awareness and time, things start regulating. Not overnight, but gradually. Once you've retrained your brain, Music sounds better again. Real attraction comes back. Motivation feels more natural. Conversations feel engaging. You might even start noticing moments that you're in again. Sunlight, a great workout, a real full belly laugh, a meaningful connection. And during challenging times, and there will be challenging times, you can stay regulated. My boys are in Japan right now. They come home tomorrow, and I just got a text that my youngest had to be rushed to the Japanese hospital in an ambulance because he's having a health situation. At first, I felt that panic in my chest, but quickly, through the work I've done, I was able to bring it down from the inside out. I was able to regulate. Declan, my oldest, who you've met on this channel, is with him, and he's very lucky to have such an emotionally mature brother to help him in a foreign country with a serious health condition. Declan is regulated, and he's able to help others and stay present in the moment. When you regulate first, small things start feeling good again, and big things don't overcome you. That might be one of the biggest, biggest signs of Healing that right there, when real life starts in all of its glory, to compete again for your attention above the artificial stimulation. But I want to say something important here. If recovery feels slower than you expected, that does not automatically mean you're doing something wrong. Sometimes your nervous system is just trying to remember how to function without those extremes. That can take time. Especially if that pattern has been running for years. Especially if there are other things that are happening to other forms of dysregulation. Poor sleep, stress, low testosterone, anxiety, depression, trauma, constant overstimulation from everything else in your life. Because again, this is not just about pornography. This is about regulation. Which brings me to something really practical. It's if you're trying to recover, do a dopamine audit. Seriously, for one week. No judgment, just awareness. Write down in your pleather journal every major source of stimulation. Scrolling gaming, sports betting, Instagram, fantasy, compulsive, shopping, energy drinks, late night rabbit holes. Write them all down. And then ask yourself these two questions. What leaves me feeling calmer after? And what leaves me feeling craving more after that second question? That changes everything. Because regulation usually leaves you feeling steadier. Dysregulation leaves you wanting another hit. And sometimes the biggest breakthrough that people have is realizing this, oh, it wasn't just porn. My whole nervous system is being overloaded by many things. That's a much more hopeful conversation. And honestly, it gives you a lot more control because it means you're not broken. Your brain has adapted. It's been mis wired by the algorithm. That's what brains do. They follow the direction of the highest and easiest reward. So the good news is your brain can also adapt back. It can be rewired in the other direction, towards your life. That is neuroplasticity at its finest, my friend. But your brain needs repetition toward the outcome that you want. It needs consistency, it needs training, and it needs time. And it usually needs a little grace. Give yourself grace, because you are in the middle of this recalibration, remember? Because recovery isn't really about becoming the person that you were before. It's about becoming regulated enough that real life, the real life that you've always wanted and that you deserve, feels good again, even if it's tricky. So if you feel stuck, if you feel flat, disconnected, like your motivation never came back online, or like you're doing everything right, but you still feel off. Sometimes it helps to actually see what's happening in your brain. Because for some people, the issue isn't willpower. For most people, the issue isn't willpower. There are actual patterns of brain dysregulation happening under the surface. Overactive reward systems, attention systems that have been miswired, stress patterns, nervous system overload. That's why brain mapping can be so powerful. Because instead of guessing, you can actually understand what's happening in your brain and what kind of support that you need. Then in my Regulate first program, we use top tier technology to rewire your brain at the source. So if you want to learn more about that, head over to Dr. Trishleigh.com and learn more about brain mapping and my regulate first neuroregulation program. Because the goal here isn't just quitting something, it's getting your brain and your life back. I'll see you next time. And until then, control your brain or it will control you.