The strange thing is that I have these wickedly erotic dreams, always a replay of some of my old favorite porn and I wake up having cum all over the bed and with this rock hard erection. The dreams are so vivid that it feels like I have watched the porn again. I am pretty much flatlined when I am awake. Is this some form of cheating that is inhibiting my healing progress. I keep wondering if that is what is going on here. Thoughts? Billy
Same thing happened to me early in my reboot, though are pretty rare these days. I'd have very vivid dreams about myself watching porn, about as vivid as I ever get. I'd wake up thinking I'd have to "reset" and start again, but I'd be up for close to an hour before it would dawn on me that it wasn't a late night porn fest, I'd merely dreamt it. I never had wet dreams with it, but I don't get those anyway... I probably came close once or twice. I always considered it a "flashback"... porn is written so deeply onto our brains, that the shadows of it are still there and it takes a lot of work to erase it. It isn't cheating if you aren't doing it deliberately. In a way it is a good sign... it is like the porn in your brain suffocating and gasping for air. When cravings are strongest you want porn when you're awake. When it is weaker, it shows up in weird ways like this. The next step is is dying even more.
No it's not cheating. What's happening is as your brain is rewiring it starts to diminish the porn you used to watch and replace it with new things (or atleast you should be trying too), when you go to bed you're not actively thinking about your recovery so perhaps you get horny, (yes you can get horny at night) your brain quickly associates it with porn because it knows it can give you dopamine and fast, hence the flashbacks. The more you recover and replace porn with other things and real sexual interactions, those dreams will change from porn to different experiences. Edit: You shouldn't be flatlining throughout the day abstaining and rewiring are completely different. You can just quit without replacing your addiction with other good dopamine releases. You need to be doing that, things like going gym, talking, walking, benign with nature, social events, etc.
I think it absolutely disrupts the healing process. I have had those situations many times in my dreams, and as soon as it starts I'll stop it before it gets out of hand. And I'm not even talking about lucid dreaming, either. I'm not claiming to have some almighty ego the controls everything, but that my unconscious is aligned with my goals to the extent that it is present in my dream states. That said, sometimes it will still happen. A wet dream by itself isn't bad, but if it's associated with highly vivid imagery or PMO related behaviors, it is certainly a problem. I'm not saying it's cheating, but it's certainly a set back in my view. This is what happens when you try to resist PMO solely through willpower. It doesn't work.
