Recovery Nation

Having used MB for stress relief and emotional support my whole life, I'm feeling conflicted and stressed now that I've gone cold turkey and stopped using MB as a crutch. I'm having sexually charged dreams at night disturbing my sleep. I'm working steadily through the lessons but it's still early and I've not gained the skills necessary to sooth myself and provide enough meaning through other activities. I believe these will come with time and effort.

Have others experienced these issues and are there appropriate ways of gaining some internal peace during this process?

Thanks,
skrelon

_________________
"Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway." --Mother Teresa

You are basically going through withdraws. Drugs like cocaine do not, in themselves, make you high, they trigger glans in your body to make you high. Sexual and climatic highs that you have been performing have done the same thing. There have been medical studies of sex addicts that have shown swelling of these glans and it has been shown to take years for them to return to their normal size after acting out has stopped.

Myself, during the 90 days recommended for all sexual activity to stop, was much the same as you have reported. I had very vivid sexual dreams, I had intense erections without even thinking about sex that would last for hours. My genitals seems agitated. I was stressed and emotional.

"The Stand", by Steven King, has an oracle who tells the hero's that they must walk from Colorado, where "the children of the light live" to Vegas, where the ones of darkness have settled. They are to take no food with them and only eat what they find on the journey. This is not only a physical journey but a spiritual one. The lack of food and the hard march places them in an altered state so that they piece the threshold of reality and embark to the nether underdark. Your abstinence from all sex, too, helps to clean out your chemical imbalance and set you in an altered state. It is in this state that you become more receptacle to the boon of recovery.

This is but one view. Hope it is insightful.

HoneyCat,

Thanks for your reply and I guess the bottom line is to use the unease to energize our studies and efforts to become healthier individuals.

skrelon

_________________
"Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway." --Mother Teresa

Ah, one thing I forgot to mention was that I totally relapsed during this time and had to start over. It can be absolute hell depending on your frequency of MB and sexual addiction. The pay off comes towards the end.

As far as dealing with sexually charged dreams, I have found lucid dreaming (and dream journaling/interpretation) to be a way to take values based actions while within the dream to create change, instead of acting on compulsions. Dreams can also be a way to gain awareness of how things are still inside of us under the surface, and to just be aware of it as it slowly dissipates over time or gives us warnings. I think also some self acceptance that we cannot always control what happens in our dreams is important

laughingchild,
Thanks for your insights, I appreciate you taking time to respond. In the past I would have used the dreams to continue my fantasy life upon awaking but now I'm trying to look at them and talk about them with my spouse so they are in the open and not hidden for compulsive behaviors.
Thanks,
skrelon

_________________
"Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway." --Mother Teresa

Thank you skrelon. That's great what you are doing!

laughingchild,
Thank you.
skrelon

_________________
"Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway." --Mother Teresa