Debunking The NoFap Flatline Myth

The flatline isn't real, and believing in it is actually keeping you stuck. Now, what is the flatline? Porn recovery groups and forums, and overall the porn recovery ideology, says that the flatline is a time after a period of abstinence from porn or masturbation where you will feel low energy, you will feel no motivation or low motivation, low libido, and overall emotionally numb. The claim sometimes is, well, your brain adapted to supernormal stimulus coming from porn. So when you remove porn, then your reward system will need time to recalibrate. Now, the issue with this statement is that yes, it does look credible. It looks like it comes from authority, that it comes from someone who has knowledge. But the reality is often these are ideas that are thrown around and we do not even have the evidence for them, but we still believe in them. Now, who are the people that talk about the flatline the most? It's often not some medical experts whatsoever, but it's actually people who are struggling themselves. Because when we look at evidence, we do have evidence. Most of them comes from self-report. So we cannot use self-report as evidence. The reason is that oftentimes what happens, and we see this obviously in placebos, the expectation of something will create the results, not because of the thing itself, not because someone abstains, therefore he gets this flatline, but rather because they expect to get a flatline, therefore he might attribute whatever he's going through, like for example, low energy, no motivation, low libido, emotional numb, to the flatline, or he might actually create it itself, create those effects himself. There was actually a 2023 study done at the university. So they had a group here. I made a little mistake, but they had a group of 176 men. Write it. They had a group of 176 men, randomized control trial over 7 days. And for those that don't know, a randomized control trial is when you take two groups, you take a treatment group and you take a control group. Just so you guys understand, the treatment group is going to get the thing that they're testing. So if they were testing a specific drug, then they will test that. And then the control group will get either nothing or a placebo. And so in this study, they compare people that quit porn for these 7 days and the people that kept on watching porn. And what they found out was that there was zero difference in craving, Mood withdrawal, nothing. Because when we look at like real withdrawals, we're talking here about substances, alcohol, opioids, caffeine. These are things that we ingest in our body. Therefore, there's gonna be side effects physically, bodily effects. Now, these numbers can be debatable, but alcohol typically it's 48 hours, opioids it's 12 hours, caffeine it can be after 2 days. But for porn, what is the number? Because you might object to this study and say, well, it's only over 7 days. Typically the flatline happens 30, 60, 90 days after the person makes the decision to completely abstain from PMO. But the real question is if withdrawals were a real biological event, meaning that they happen to your body whether you want it or not, whether you think it's true or not, like we see happening with substances. It can be debatable. For example, we have Alfred Lindsmith who did research and wrote a book, Opiates and Addiction, which is a great book. Where it talked about how people interpret the withdrawals is going to then determine if they decide to continue on taking a drug or if they see it as a sign that they're still addicted. And people that do not interpret it that way, that they just see it as side effects and just overall sickness, will typically not consume the drug again because they don't make the link between addiction and withdrawals. But that's another topic, and it's not my expertise. Because a lot of people claim, okay, you have porn withdrawals, you're gonna have the flatline, as if it was a biological event bound to happen. but somehow we cannot find even a single trace within the first week. And then there's the deeper problem. Those that do claim the porn recovery own form, their, their own data says that there's no way to predict when or if, and I'm not gonna mention which specific form, you can do your own research, but they said that there's no way to predict when or if you're going to have a flatline, and it can happen once, many times, Or not at all. And what's even more shocking is that 25% only of surveyed users coming from these porn recovery groups experienced it. If it's 25%, then that means that the rest, the 75% of the surveyed users did not experience that flatline. Now, also, one of the issues is the timelines don't really add up. Is it on day 7? Is it on day 30? Is it on day 90? If it was biological, then it would be consistent, or we would see patterns. Okay. They always get, uh, let's say the flatline flatline between day 45 and day 65. Some people say they experience a flatline on day 200. I've seen this because I've been in this space for multiple years now. I see people say on day 90. I've seen other people say on, on day 30. And usually withdrawals would be consistent, will be predictable, they will be measurable, just like for these substances. But obviously it's not the case with porn. Now, some people make the claim that we have the flatline because of the brain malfunctioning, because when you watch porn, we always get exposed to this famous picture of the fMRI scans where they show a normal brain, they show a brain on drugs, and then they show a brain on porn. And we see the brain on porn is worse than the one on drugs. So people think, oh yeah, that must be true because if experts came up with that, then of course we're going to appeal to authority. We're not going to say, you know what, I'm going to question them and challenge them without even having the knowledge ourselves. So we as human beings have this tendency to just appeal to authority, but What we don't understand is that the brain changes that do occur is a normal function of anything that we repetitively do, anything that we, we do consistently over a certain period of time. And that includes— and there is research, for example, on the taxi drivers in London, the famous research on how a certain part of their brain grew. That happens when we learn, for example, to play the piano, when people learn instruments, when people learn how to speak a different language, when people study for exams, when we watch porn, when we do everything, our brain changes so that it can adapt to that new habit, to that thing that we do. Because think about it like this, the first time you do something, it's hard, you need to really think about it and you need to spend a lot of mental energy on it. But as you do it over and over again, it almost becomes automatic. When you decide to do that thing, You don't really think too much about it. You just do it almost like a robot. Of course, not to that extent, but you do it without spending too much mental energy. And this is what neuroplasticity is for. It's there so that your brain will change. Neuroplasticity, because human beings do not want to spend too much mental energy on things that they will do repetitively, things that they will do on a day-to-day basis. We see this with, for example, experienced cooks. They will cut, let's say, the chicken without even really looking because they've practiced it so much that their brains will help them do it almost automatically. So to only say that our brain changes when we consume drugs, when we watch porn, when we do anything that's bad, is a complete lie. It is just not true. Now another argument is imagine you never came across the concept of a flatline. Imagine you never ever came across it, okay? And let's say that it was, even I'll be generous, that it was still biologically real, meaning that it would happen to you. If that were the case, but you didn't know that it was a thing, and on day 90 you feel low energy, no motivation, low libido, emotionally numb, what would happen? Would you think, oh, this means that I need to watch porn again or because my libido is down, or that I'm experiencing withdrawals? Or would you try to maybe look for other factors? Because you don't know it's because of porn. You don't know that it's because of the fact that you abstain from PMO. Usually people will look behind the curtain and say, okay, I feel low energy. Maybe it's because I didn't sleep properly yesterday. Oh, maybe I should go to the gym and really pump myself up because When I work out, I feel more energetic and my libido even spikes up and I feel better about myself. You see, they will start thinking about solutions, but also they wouldn't just blame it on something that's outside of their control. So even if the flatline was real, would it be beneficial for us to believe that something is happening to us that's completely outside of our control and will impact us and might even make us want to go and watch porn. This is my criticism towards the concept of the flatline. Not only do we lack evidence for it, but also, is it beneficial to even believe in it? Not at all. What's actually happening for most people is that when you watch porn all of your life and you masturbate, let's say for 8 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, 30 years, I've coached people that it's been over 30 years that they've been struggling with pornomasturbation. Usually that means that they use pornomasturbation as one of the primary coping mechanisms. The day you remove a coping mechanism, what does that mean? You'll have to face life, which might mean that you'll have to face personal life problems that occurred in the past, uh, things that you still haven't solved that might affect you emotionally. And this is where the low energy, the no motivation, the emotional numb, the low libido could come from. When we think about it, let's say that every day after work, every day after working, let's say on your business, you feel lonely. But in the past, what you would do is you would go and watch porn and masturbate, and therefore you would escape from that reality that you are lonely and that maybe you don't have great friends or you don't have anyone around you. If you remove porn and masturbation, now you're just there with your own thoughts. And maybe you're going to start thinking about other problems in your life, and that's going to emotionally drain you. You're going to feel low energy because of that. You're not going to feel motivated anymore. This is what could happen. Now, of course, there's also the nocebo effect, which is the basically placebo when there's a negative outcome where you believe in the flatline because you've been told about the flatline so many times and you've seen so many other people experience it that you think this is going to happen to me as well. The biggest thing about that is When we anticipate something, we can easily create that thing, especially feelings, especially emotions, because emotions, feelings are only a byproduct of what we think about. In order for me to feel anger, I need to think about something that makes me feel angry. In order for me to feel sad, I need to think about something that's sad. And these emotions do not just happen out of nowhere and you don't even know why. Except of course, if there's certain mental health issues involved, but for most people watching this, that is not the case. And sometimes there is also the fact that you'll experience an identity crisis. Sometimes when you go from watching porn all of your life, and then now you're faced with life, all of your life, you were used to just distracting yourself, to just escaping. You would watch porn and then you would play video games and then You would scroll on social media, and then you're just there by yourself. You're going to have to maybe find yourself. You're going to have to think about what actually matters to you. And sometimes it's also an issue of maybe you've been identifying as this addict. You're an addict to porn. You think that, but now that you're, let's say, uh, 90 days without it, it's been a long time you haven't done it. Now, who are you? And this can create distress. For people as they are not used to that life. I'm not saying that they're not going to adapt. Most people will adapt naturally if they believe that they can, but it can create some form of distress. Then lastly, the issue, and this is what we're going to talk about, normal mood gets pathologized. What does that mean? We take ups and downs. Okay, I feel depressed today, and then I felt great, and then I felt bad, that feels sad, and we say, oh, we can trace that back to a certain thing happening in your brain. Oh, you feel down? Well, maybe it's because of depression. But the mistake that a lot of people make is they say, okay, I feel down, this is because of withdrawals. I feel down, this is because of the flatline. And to think that you're going through withdrawals and to go through a flatline, for most people, this is not something that they're really optimistic about. This is not something that they're really looking forward to. Of course not. How we grew up, we've been told people that consume drugs go through withdrawals, and sometimes they go crazy and they, they become deviants and they live on the streets. And there's all of this fear that we have around withdrawals. And so when we think that we are experiencing those things, then we will have that fear. And to live in fear usually means that you will take decisions based on that fear. You will think, okay, well, maybe I just need like more recovery. Maybe I just need to stay longer. I need to watch more videos about quitting porn because this is going to be a battle that I'm going to have to fight. And so the fear itself usually also brings a host of other emotions, a host of other prompts. Of course, low energy, low motivation, low libido, emotional numb can be part of, uh, that fear, as a byproduct of fear. We all know that, for example, people that overthink, they will create negative emotions, they will feel negative emotions, they will have these distorted thoughts, they'll become neurotic just because they're overthinking. Not because the situation that they're currently in makes them feel that way, but just because they're too much in their minds and they think about different scenarios and they think about so many things. And so if we go to Japan and SSRI, which are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, AKA antidepressants. And of course we have the famous 2008 meta-analysis, meaning that they took a bunch of, uh, studies and they saw that antidepressants— and I'm not here to talk about depression today— they saw that antidepressants and placebo gave essentially the same results. But in Japan, what happened in 1990s was that Japan did not really have a market for antidepressants. It was something that was not really known to them to have depression. It was just something that, that was not really talked about. There was some kind of stigma around it, but also they believed that it only happened to certain people, just like mental illnesses, for example. But then, and I've talked about this in previous videos, the pharmaceutical industry obviously wanted to sell more of their products. And antidepressants really became popular around the 1960s after the Second World War. And what happened— I'll quickly go over this— they created this slogan in Japanese, Kokoro no Kaze, which means that your soul can catch a cold, a cold of the soul. And they introduced this idea alongside, obviously, antidepressants as antidepressants were the solution to the cold of the soul. And they taught people, they taught the Japanese that when you experience fluctuations of moods, okay, you feel good today, and then a few minutes later you feel bad and you feel angry, and then you feel sad, that this was a sign that essentially your soul catch the cold, that you have depression. And here's the antidepressants because this is not normal that you feel that way. And what happened is this is in yen. Uh, this is not in USD, but in, uh, their currency, the market went from $14.5 billion to $87 billion, about 6 times as much, whilst before it was not really something that they paid too much attention to. So if we really sum it up, guys, the flatline could be said that is a subjective experience shaped by expectations, stress, and life changes, and not a proven biological phase. So the question I'll leave you with is, if the flatline, if there's a lack of evidence for the flatline, then would it be beneficial for us to believe in something which we're not even sure about, which there's not much proof for? And I would argue that there's only downsides to believing that you're going to potentially go over this period of low energy, no motivation, and low libido, and to feel emotionally numb. Is it truly beneficial? If not, then could we actually gain more from not believing in the flatline? As not only is there essentially no proof, but would it be beneficial for us to believe in it? So guys, the issue for most people, it's that we don't know what's really going on underneath. We are often quick to blame addiction, flatline, withdrawals, urges. And of course, I used to be there and I used to say, okay, I, I'm experiencing withdrawals, and I'm experiencing temptations, and they feel real. Okay, I'm not going to deny that, but it's not because we feel something that that means that that thing is true. And I can give many examples of that in our daily life, but what we really need to focus on is what's going on underneath. Why do we want to watch it? We need to focus on that because then we will be able to understand why we consume this in the first place, and then we can make changes from there. It's very hard to make changes when we believe that we are the victim of the urges, of the temptations, of the flatline, of the withdrawals, of the addiction, and so on. So think about it. If you want more help with this, I highly suggest you watch my 3-hour video right here. That is a full course on quitting porn and masturbation for good. And I'll see you guys in the next video.