A man lost a close friendship he blamed on his porn addiction, which became his breaking point. He spent a month at Zen Mountain Monastery meditating to reset his dopamine system, then did an ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica with shamans to process trauma and grief. Both experiences helped him develop self-compassion and build new habits.
The crushing blow to that good friendship that felt tied to my porn use was such a wake-up call. It hurts so, so fucking bad that I knew I really needed to do something. Like, really need to do something. So I decided to go to a monastery, went to Zen Mountain Monastery for over a month. And then I, from the end of February to end of March this year, and now it's May, and then right after that, I did a week of ayahuasca in Costa Rica. I was deeply helped by those experiences. They were transformative. I let that energy shed off. I let my dopamine systems rebalance. I let myself see all my thoughts, all my negativities that were causing the addictions to continue, all that stress, all that trauma, all the stuff that could come from family or whatever in life, seeing how bad it was in the back of my mind and body and developing new behaviors, just sitting with with it, doing nothing with it, feeling it, however awful it felt, and saying compassionate things like, may all beings be well, just turning my mind into a happier place through meditation. And ayahuasca, it was a huge energetic purging, really intense, deeply feeling it and deeply seeing my mind, yelling, crying, shaking all that energy out, getting it out with the help of shamans and a group of other people, talking things out. That helps so much.
