For the first few weeks, you feel great. Tons of energy, tons of motivation, everything seems to be clicking. And then one day, you wake up and just feel kinda “blah”. Things seem less exciting. You’re less interested in your hobbies and quest for self-mastery. The ladies no longer seem as interested, and that spark of confidence you found seems to have died out.
What gives? You were doing everything by the book, what kind of cruel trick is this?
The Flatline/PAWS Phenomenon
In the retention community, you’ve hit what’s called a flatline. In the world of addiction and recovery, this same phenomenon is known as PAWS – Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome. Both are marked by varying degrees of anhedonia (loss of a sense of pleasure), mood swings, depression, lack of libido, irritability, brain fog, even sleep issues.
In short, life becomes dull, gray and more difficult and annoying than usual. Fun stuff.
Without going into too much detail, what’s happening is your brain is trying to readjust its neurochemistry and come back into balance after you’ve taken away its drug of choice – whether that drug is cocaine, alcohol, opiates, or porn and masturbation. You’ve been overstimulating the reward circuitry in your brain, and now that you’ve taken away that stimulus, you’re left feeling at a loss.
PAWS usually comes in waves or cycles, for a few months up to a few years, depending on the severity of the addiction and a person’s personal biochemistry. The same will apply to flatlining, although I’d venture to guess that for most of us it will be milder than for those with serious drug addictions – though your mileage may vary.
It’s important to remember that if you hit a flatline, it won’t last forever. It’s also important to remember that when that flatline ends, you may hit another one in a few days, weeks or months. Your brain is readjusting, and you have to be patient considering the years of abuse you put it through.
Please check out this great podcast on understanding addiction and the process of PAWS, if you’d like a deeper dive.
The good news is there are a ton of ways to mitigate the effects of PAWS/flatlines, and these same strategies can be used any time you’re feeling down, for whatever reason. Let’s get to it.
Laying the Foundation
The first step for anyone going through a flatline or PAWS is maximizing brain health. We want to be creating an environment conducive to feeling like an unstoppable badass, and we do this by providing the brain with the building blocks it needs for healthy amounts of neurotransmitters, and by reducing inflammation.
This is stuff we should already be doing – eating properly, getting enough sleep, and getting daily/near daily exercise.
Food
We’ve heard the saying “You are what you eat” so many times it’s lost its profundity, but if you are eating crap foods, you will feel like crap. Period. I could write an entire book on this topic but let’s keep things shit simple, shall we?
Our diet profoundly impacts our severity of flatlining (and mood in general) for two main reasons.
The first is that the nutrients found in the food you eat, specifically vitamins, amino acids and minerals, are the building blocks of neurotransmitters – such as dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, endorphins and GABA – which have profound effects on your mood, energy levels and outlook on life. The amount of nutrients found in junk food will obviously pale in comparison to that found in natural, minimally processed whole foods.
The amino acids that make up your neurotransmitters come from protein. Therefore, whether you’re vegan or not, you need to be eating sufficient amounts of protein. If vegan, realize that most plant sources of protein are incomplete, and you need to combine them in order to get a full amino acid profile. If you’re working out and lifting weights, you need to consume even more protein.
Simply put, more of these specific nutrients = more raw substrate for your body to synthesize what it needs in order to grab life by the balls and kick major ass.
Second, what you eat profoundly affects your levels of inflammation. Junk food is not only devoid of crucial nutrients, it’s almost always extremely inflammatory, and the link between inflammation and depression, chronic disease, pain and low energy levels is beyond obvious at this point. In the sake of brevity I will leave it to you to research this topic if you are interested.
Of particular importance is cutting out refined vegetable/seed/nut oils and deep fried foods, as these oils are not only extremely high in Omega 6 fatty acids that are pro-inflammatory, but these oils are also rancid due to their polyunsaturated fatty acids and the refinement process they go through. Your body tries to incorporate these rancid fatty acids into the cellular membranes, wreaking all kinds of havoc.
The only extracted oils you should be using are high quality olive oil, butter from free range cows, coconut oil, avocado oil and red palm oil. Also to note, most packaged snacks, chips, crackers, etc. are loaded with these oils as they’re much cheaper to produce than the healthier varieties, so you should avoid them or at least reduce them.
Foods that are high in polyphenols, phytochemicals and Omega 3s are foods to focus on. Fatty fish, berries, green tea, dark chocolate, herbs and spices (especially turmeric, ginger, rosemary) and dark leafy greens should be consumed on the regs.
You can also supplement with a high quality fish oil and a turmeric/curcumin supplement as well, to further lower inflammation.
Less junk food, more protein, no vegetable oils/deep fried foods, as many fresh, whole foods as possible.
Sleep
Sleep is the great restorer. Your brain is healing. You need to prioritize your sleeping habits to recover. I won’t go into detail beyond saying to make sure you get regular, deep, high quality sleep.
Check out this in-depth podcast if you’d like to learn how to perfect your sleep.
Exercise
On the flip side of sleep, exercise is the great amplifier. It boosts mood, energy levels, self-worth, and precious, precious dopamine.
It’s also the best example of a state-changer. Do you feel depressed? Go on a long run, or do some hill sprints. You’re angry? Lift some heavy ass weights.
Again, I’m not going to go into detail here – we all know exercise does wonders on mood, motivation and energy levels. If you aren’t getting some form of regular, somewhat-intense exercise, then, well… I guess you don’t want to help yourself get out of this hole you dug for yourself.
Increase Your Yang Jing Energy
I’ve talked a lot about increasing sexual energy before, which is known as jing within Traditional Chinese Medicine. This is split into two categories – yin jing, which is deeply nourishing and restorative, and yang jing, which is more activating and motivating. Using jing-boosting herbs is the easiest and most effective way to increase these energies.
When we begin on our retention path, we don’t want to increase the amount of yang energy too much, as it will generally increase our libido, and lead to relapse. Plus, practicing retention naturally increases our yang jing. As we progress on the path and increase our levels of control, we can begin to start adding in some more yang-boosting herbs.
Increasing our yang energy leads to an increase in drive, motivation, libido, and hunger for both life and women. As such, these herbs should only be used by those experiencing a flatline or by those who have learned to control their impulses, but it feels damn fine to increase that fiery yang jing. It’s like being a teenager all over again – loads of energy, super high libido, and the whole world feels fresh and juicy.
It’s essentially the opposite of a flatline.
I haven’t shared much about these herbs as they can easily push most guys over the edge, and most guys practicing retention should steer clear of them, until they really have their game down… But for the guy in the midst of relapse, they can really help you break out of it.
My top picks would be cistanche, cordyceps and red ginseng. These all increase yang jing without being too stimulating, with cistanche being the least stimulating to libido, then cordyceps, and then red ginseng.
Head over to Nootropics Depot or Dragon Herbs if you’d like to snag some. Whichever product you use, try it out until you begin to feel like you’re coming out of a flatline, and then either shelf it, or decrease your dosage/usage so it doesn’t lead to a relapse.
Cut out Other Dopamine Wasters
This is another biggie. We cut out what may be our biggest empty waste of dopamine – the PMO cycle. There are still these other stragglers we likely are engaging in daily that are further interfering with our recovery, namely things such as social media (including Reddit and Discord), constant gaming, binge watching tv shows, etc.
Now in a perfect world, you could just cut these things out and find more productive, engaging things to participate in. But we’re living in the middle of a pandemic, we may not have the funds or the means to find all sorts of fun, interesting things to do. And since we cut out PMO, our brain is going to be craving more sources of dopamine release, which is only going to be making these time wasters even more attractive.
If you’re the strong willed type, highly motivated to recover, and already have plenty of other things to do with your time, it’s time to nut up and cut them out completely for a while. It might sting a little, life will feel kinda blah, but give it two weeks and things will start looking up. A month later and you’ve got a whole new you.
If this sounds too difficult, at least limit these activities. Scrolling on Instagram, Reddit or TikTok is absolutely pointless, and is nothing but a stimulating distraction from your actual life. These things are masturabtion for your mind! I’d cut those things out completely, or at least limit it to 15 mins in the morning and 15 mins in the evening.
Stop binge watching things on Netflix or YouTube. When you watch things, at least try to make it educational by watching a documentary or something inspirational. In either case, put a limit on that as well – a little bit in the evening, certainly no more than half an hour most days, occasionally allowing yourself a bit more on the weekends or something.
Limit gaming as well, but in my eyes, it isn’t quite as bad. It’s interactive, requires some skill, and can even have a social aspect to it. But again, you need to place limits on it. Bottom line, either cut out pointless screen time or reduce it drastically.
Environmental Enrichment
Environmental enrichment is defined as “a combination of more opportunities for physical activity, learning and social interaction,” and has repeatedly been demonstrated to not only increase neurogenesis (the brain building new neural connections) but to prevent addictive behavior and reduce relapses after addiction has set in.
The classic example is a study of the effect of two different environments on rats in relation to self-administration of cocaine. One group of rats were placed in isolated cages, where the only other things in the cage were water, food, and a lever they could press that would self-administer cocaine. Obviously, with not much else to do, these little fellas turned into your veritable Tony Montana, doing more booger sugar than Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed.
The other rats were placed in cages with the same water, food, and cocaine set up, but also had access to mazes, wheels to run in, and other rats to hang and shoot the shit with. These rats would occasionally go over to the cocaine lever, but spent a ton of time doing other stuff.
One group of rats thrived in their enriched environment; the other group succumbed to the woes of boredom by constant self-administration of fine, Columbian nose candy.
Let’s just look at the abstract of a 2010 study, Prevention and treatment of drug addiction by environmental enrichment –
“Accumulating evidence indicates that EE can mimic positive life experiences and prevent the development of drug addiction. More recently, EE has also been shown to eliminate already developed addiction-related behaviors and to reduce the risks of relapse. These preventive and ‘curative’ effects of EE are associated with dramatic plastic changes (neurogenesis) in several brain areas such as the hippocampus, the frontal cortex and the striatum. EE alters neurotransmitter systems, produces changes in gene expression and transcription factors, induces chromatin rearrangement, and stimulates hippocampal neurogenesis. Here we review the existent literature on behavioral, neurochemical, cellular and molecular effects of EE and we discuss different possible ways in which EE-induced neuroadaptations result in decreased vulnerability to addiction and relapse. We propose a unified theoretical framework in which EE is seen as a functional opposite of stress. On the one hand, the antistress effects of EE would reduce the reinforcing effects of drugs and their ability to induce long-lasting neuroplastic changes and, thus, they would prevent the development of drug addiction. On the other hand, permanent or transient restoration of the normal, pre-drug functioning of the stress system would facilitate resisting prepotent desire to take drugs and it would decrease the risks of relapse.”
Quit PMO -> have nothing else to do -> depression and withdrawal -> relapse -> feelings of guilt, shame, powerlessness and regret
Vs.
Quit PMO -> have enriched environment -> THRIVE
How do we enrich our environments?
For one thing, exercise. “Many of these changes can be effected merely by introducing a physical exercise regimen rather than requiring cognitive activity per se.”
Interaction with other people is huge. You have to constantly be on your toes and mentally agile to keep the conversation going, to keep things lively.
Spice up your living space. Get yourself some damn house plants. Whenever I have a lady over I get tons of compliments for having multiple plants in my house. Learn a musical instrument and keep it out of its case and ready to be played. Have interesting books lying around. Listen to new music. Hell, I haven’t seen any research on it but I guarantee you playing a new video game has a bit of the same beneficial effect.
Make your living space as interesting as possible. Make your life as interesting as possible.
Go out and hike, or even better, join a hiking group. Put yourself in a whole new environment by hiking, visiting a different coffee shop rather than your staple one, and taking a different route to work or school. Learn a new sport, hobby, craft. Travel. Go to a new restaurant. Learn how to cook a new meal. For God’s sake, do something with your life!
The great Louis CK – “People say, ‘My phone sucks.’ No, it doesn’t! The shittiest cellphone in the world is a miracle. Your life sucks. Around the phone.”
Make sure your life doesn’t suck.
Brain Hacking
Dopamine
A big pursuit in the nootropics community is improving “dopaminergic tone”. This is done either by using compounds that increase dopamine synthesis/release and/or using other compounds that increase your brain’s sensitivity to dopamine.
The basic premise is: enhance dopaminergic tone -> increase motivation, drive and pleasure.
Because of rampant PMO, we have dealt a massive blow to dopamine receptors and the reward circuitry in our brains. The constant smashing of the pleasure buttons in our brain has caused them to become less sensitive to dopamine (from all sources) in an effort to maintain homeostasis. Because we have finally stopped mindlessly engaging in PMO and have thus taken away our empty source of dopaminergic stimulation, we’re left with a brain that produces less dopamine from normal activities and is less sensitive to the dopamine the receptors do come into contact with. No bueno.
There are many substances out there that enhance the synthesis and/or release of dopamine within the brain, ranging from simple amino acids like L-tyrosine, to herbs such as mucuna, to pharmaceutical agents such as adderall.
I recommend trying out L-tyrosine or DL-phenylalanine (DLPA) as dopamine precursors. We want to start by providing the brain with the nutrients it needs to synthesize its own production of dopamine. The brain uses l-tyrosine to create L-DOPA, which it then converts into dopamine.
L-phenylalanine is the precursor to L-tyrosine, while *D-*phenylalanine inhibits an enzyme in the body that breaks down enkephalins, naturally occurring endorphin peptides. This means that supplementing with DLPA not only boosts dopamine synthesis but also the production of mood-boosting and pain-relieving endorphins.
On the other end of the spectrum, we want to keep our brain sensitive to the dopamine we areproducing.
The adaptogenic herb gynostemma prevents the death of over-stimulated dopamine neurons, as does magnesium. In terms of dopamine resensitization, cordyceps has to be my top pick. It’s an adaptogenic mushroom that not only boosts our sexual energy, but enhances the expression of the rate-limiting enzyme tyrosine-hydroxylase, which converts L-tyrosine to L-DOPA, working in an entirely different method than tyrosine and phenylalanine.
Uridine, as well as sulbutiamine, a fat-soluble form of vitamin B1, both up regulate dopamine D2 receptors, as does forskolin.
I highly recommend heading over to Nootropics Depot for these supplements. Dragon Herbs has a great gynostemma tea I drink daily, as well as a few awesome cordyceps products, with this tincturebeing my top pick.
Embrace the Suck
Guess what my friend? You dug yourself into this hole, now it’s time to marinate in it and grow from it.
It sucks. It’s hard. It isn’t all butterflies and rainbows and puppy kisses.
But that’s life. And you need to embrace it, because life is tough, man. Life isn’t always fun and easy, and neither should it be. “No pain, no gain” is a trite saying but there is a massive kernel of truth there. You had your wonton fun that got you into this mess, now you have to deal with the consequences, and the good news? That’s a good thing.
Growth only occurs through stress. You can’t get bigger muscles without stressing them through a workout. You can’t become smarter without putting in the time and doing some studying.
And you can’t grow as a human being without going through some hardship. This is but a small bump in your road, my dude! Feel the boredom, feel the apathy, feel the lack of energy, embrace it, and grow from it.
“For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.” – Plato
“Resistance is the grindstone of our soul.” – Aubrey Marcus
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will you ever be polished?” – Rumi
“No man is more unhappy than he who has never faced adversity, for he is not permitted to prove himself.” Seneca
Wim Hof Method
The Wim Hof Method is a breathing routine you may have heard of. It combines a specific type of hyperventilation combined with breath holds, usually followed by a cold shower or ice bath. It’s very invigorating and really will get you feeling energized – with science behind it as well.
It’s helpful for us experiencing PAWS because both the breathing method and the cold exposure decrease inflammation (which leads to apathy, fatigue and depression, remember?) greatly increase levels of adrenaline within the body, boosting your mood and increasing energy levels.
It’s like a shot of espresso that you create internally yourself.
“Compared to a control group who were not trained in the Wim Hof Method, the trained participants showed fewer flu-like symptoms, lower levels of proinflammatory mediators, and increased plasma epinephrine levels. In conclusion, the trained group was able to voluntarily activate their sympathetic nervous system.”
The method also “showed activation of areas in the brain associated with pain suppression, self-reflection and well-being, in particular the periaqueductal gray area (PAG)”.
As for cold exposure, per this excellent write up by Dr. Rhonda Patrick – “There is anecdotal evidence that cold exposure improves mood and it has been suggested that cold showers may even be used to prevent and treat depression.”
“One of the most consistent and profound physiological responses to cold exposure is a robust release of norepinephrine into the bloodstream, as well as in the locus coeruleus region of the brain. What makes norepinephrine so interesting is that it’s not only a hormone but also a neurotransmitter and is involved in vigilance, focus, attention and mood… Decreased norepinephrine neurotransmission is associated with inattention, decreased focus and cognitive ability, low energy, and poor mood (generally).”
Here’s how to do it –
- Breathe in through the mouth forcibly but passively let the air back out, and repeat thirty times.
- On the thirtieth breath, inhale fully, release the air out passively and then hold your breath with mostly empty lungs, until it gets fairly uncomfortable.
- Breathe back in, filling your lungs about 90%, and hold the breath inside for 15-20 seconds. This is one round.
- Complete three rounds total.
- Get in your ice bath or cold shower
And boom! Instant mood and energy boost.
This can also be done without a cold shower – it’s still quite energizing.
Motivation vs Discipline
Let’s just keep this one short and to the point. Motivation waxes and wanes, just like everything in life. When you’re feeling motivated, that’s great, time to kick some ass. When you’re not feeling motivated, guess what? That’s great, time to kick some ass!
Motivation is great when you have it, but it won’t always be there. Better to just develop unshakeable discipline instead.
“Don’t expect to be motivated every day to get out there and make things happen. You won’t be. Don’t count on motivation. Count on Discipline.” – Jocko Willink
On Jocko’s instagram, he pretty much only posts his wake up times. Showing that he always wakes up before 5 am. A very boring instagram account, but one that drives the point home.
Parting Thoughts
Flatlines are a bitch, and while there are a lucky minority that don’t really experience them, most will in some form or another.
Recognize them as simply a goalpost along the way, a road marker of sorts. They are part and parcel of semen retention, and rather than being feared, should be embraced. Use these tactics, and instead of waiting for a flatline to occur, implement them beforehand.
Like all things in life, they come and they go. Don’t get attached to the highs and lows of life, just keep putting in the work, and all good things will be due to you in time.
Keep on keeping on, brothers
Thank you for this in depth article