Noir King's Recovery Log

[lastnoirking87]

Ok interesting, I am on the herbs and strict protocol 9 weeks now-7 weeks on herbs. To be honest my sides now are all sexual;0 libido and bad ed. Whilst my mental health has improved greatly since the crash in March I feel little to nothing of the herbs for my sexual sides.

I am dosing with pine pollen daily and all herbs on tmo. I have ordered the prohormones and am hoping they will move me in the right direction.

It's all a matter of feeling out your own individual path here, ultimately. The TMO outline is where we all should start, but as the months wear on, we start to get a feel for what our individual bodies need, and how they are responding to certain things.
I didnt mean to imply that doing the Ultra Hard is a desperate move, but just that I dont want to decide to do it simply because I'm getting impatient at this relatively advanced stage of the program. In my particular case, it became very clear to me that my upswings were seriously dramatic, even the first ones. My body responds dramatically to the basic TMO protocol, sans prohormones, basically. From the best I can tell from reading accounts of users prohormone runs, my upswings hit like a really successful DHT prohormone cycle. I mean, within my first few upswings I was shot from the pit of decimation into the 80-90% range of sexual functioning, however briefly. My last few upswings had me in the 90 plus % range for 2 to 6 weeks, and that's only 6 months into the protocol. I'm now sitting pat at a baseline that's probably at roughly 90% on any given day... So, for me, the prohormones dont seem so necessary as of yet. If I had been on protocol for 3 months and barely got one minor upswing out of it, and/or had to weather a lot of turbulence to get it, I would have been hitting the Ultra Hard very soon...if you see what I mean.
In your case, keep at it for sure. This is still really early on. Cognitive and mood improvements are what you should be expecting at this early stage. That stuff got dramatically better before sexual stuff began to improve at all, so you're on the right track for sure.

[lastnoirking87]

I've come to conclude that things are simply leveling off somewhat, and I am therefore not being smacked in the face with these crazy upswings like I was in the beginning. This is actually a good thing, as its evidence that my baseline health has come such a long distance that my upswings no longer feel like I'm being brought back from the dead. My average day now would have been considered an upswing 2 or more months ago. I am getting a better grasp on how this is all changing as I move along the trail of progress here, so excuse me if I sounded too unsure or insecure in my previous post or 2. Things are indeed changing, but its definitely for the better. Since I'm no longer experiencing these dramatic downswings, the "ups" dont feel like such a crazy catapult. Instead of oscillating between a level 1 (total shit) and a level 10 (godlike) experience, I'm just fluctuating between level 5 (acceptable and not unenjoyable) and 10 now. I think I've made my point...
The other good news is that, amidst this decent/great fluctuation, I am indeed noticing small improvements as the weeks pass. Lets face it, even when you're violently swinging up and down in the early days, it's still pretty slow progress you're making on your baseline health, but now it's even more subtle. It seems like the body is sensing it's not in such danger as it was in the beginning, and is maybe therefore allocating resources to other things rather than trying to fix the hormonal mess day in and day out. That's sort of the impression I get anyway.

Some scattered details/noteworthy observations over the last couple of weeks...
The whole arousal process seems more normal. Flow of thought/fantasy seems to be returning to normal. Sometimes it IS entirely normal...this is happening more and more.
Orgasm pleasure intensity is definitely returning gradually. Ive had some orgasms that left me temporarily comatose, like they usually did prePFS.
Also, the pre-orgasm excitement is becoming more noticeable as well...this is something I almost didnt even notice was missing, but now that its returning, I kind of cant believe I failed to notice it. The "build up" sense, you could call it, is what I mean...
My pits are emitting a particularly strong odor when I'm aroused again
My appetite is usually enormous lately, which is something that used to wane when I was in a downswing or just not feeling great. Its generally always healthy now, and I'm finally putting on some actual bulk rather than just chiseling my muscles. Have taken up more aggressive ab workout routine to keep on top of the extra weight actually....really just a few pounds, but it looks like a lot more (in a good way)...
Libido is still not budging much. It's there when I get myself going, and can even be ravenous at that point, but it's like I can just go days without really thinking much about sex if I dont stop and decide to think about it/engage in it. So, I cant complain, because I'm functional and the libido comes when I call for it, but its not nagging me all day in the back of my mind like I'm used to...basically, if that were fixed, I'd have to put myself at 95-100% ...
I figure I'll get there before long. Will keep updating with any big news.

[lastnoirking87]

Well, gents, a corner has been turned. I wanted to wait a week or so to ensure this wasnt a one-time flicker sort of deal, but I am now routinely either staying at, or fluctuating between 100% and 90%. Previous to this, I was fluctuating between 80% and 90-95%, to put this progress into perspective.
While I'm not necessarily implying a direct causation, I made an effort to gain more weight in the ast few weeks, and the two major parts of that were increasing my carb back loads a good bit and cutting down on my non-HIIT cardio. I suddenly piled on 8 lbs in about a month after making these adjustments, and it appears to be mostly.muscle.
No idea if those changes may have possibly caused a rise in estrogen, which I may have needed, being a Saw Palmetto case (SP guys are said to oftentimes have low E), but I suppose it's possible. The rise in libido seems to maybe be consistent with that possibility as well.
Make what you will of that, but what is certain is that serious progress has been made in boosting my baseline status more towards normalcy.
Keep in mind, when I said above that I am routinely feeling 100%, that's in the sexual department. Every other category, due to the effects of diligent adherence to the TMO protocol for 8 months now, is well beyond my old 100%.
I am expecting it to be some time before I stick at 100% on the sexual front, but I just had to share this bit of progress in my log. It is quite clear to me that the healing finish line is within sight at this point, even if some more ups and downs await me.
I am incredibly moved by the fact that the 1 year anniversary of my crash (september 11th) was spent feeling 100% sexually and 100+% everywhere else.
I also wanted to add here that, shortly before I began moving upwards to these heights, I weathered about a week-long downswing that was the worst I've had in probably 5 months. While the duration was pretty short, the depth of the plunge was so great that I experienced what I've seen CD refer to as "the big doubt," where, somewhere about half way or further down the line of your healing journey, you fall so far towards the starting point that you feel it's all been for nothing. I fell there, and it was dark. I was revisiting some of the old though patterns from early on in my journey, and was really forced to see how incredibly far I had come up to that point. I just wanted to stress to those that need to hear it that big plunges usually foretell big progress around the corner. Dont fall off your horse during those times.
I'll keep posted with further progress...in the meantime, thanks again to you, CD, and godspeed to everyone.

[isseo]

I'm happy for you. Do you feel that prohormones have helped you sexually? I had seen a good improvement without prohormones and there, I don't know why, I feel like I'm back to square one. I hope it's just a bad slowdown and it comes back.

[xxaleksi]

Great job man, happy for you!

[Outlaw]

You're a tank man, happy for you!! We're following behind

[lastnoirking87]

I'm happy for you. Do you feel that prohormones have helped you sexually? I had seen a good improvement without prohormones and there, I don't know why, I feel like I'm back to square one. I hope it's just a bad slowdown and it comes back.

Hey there...I never actually used my two bottles of Ultra Hard yet, and at this point, likely won't until possibly well after I am total recovered. I've explained this in depth in an earlier post here in my log, but within a month of beginning the protocol I was experiencing such dramatic and consistent upswings (interspersed, of course, with downswings) that I just never felt the need to use the ultra Hard.
Like I said, I have repeatedly noticed the correlation between bad downswings and great upswings following closely behind, so my advice is simply to stick it out and remain vigilant. The prohormones likely just laid the groundwork for a big down/up movement.

[Mjw1999]

Great post and well done. It’s so nice to have some positivity back on the forum. Let’s keep it going!

[GoldenSun]

Makes me happy to hear man. Like the post above me said, I'm glad we are returning to a positive attitude on this forum once again!

[lastnoirking87]

Great post and well done. It’s so nice to have some positivity back on the forum. Let’s keep it going!

Thanks man