Reclaim Your Mind: Beat Lust Addiction by Fixing Your Hormones

# Reclaim Your Mind: Beat Lust Addiction by Fixing Your Hormones

Hey gents, Chad here.

If you've been grinding away at lust and porn cravings with raw willpower and losing, it's not because you're weak. It's because you're fighting the wrong opponent.

Lust addiction is a chemistry problem. Testosterone, dopamine, and cortisol are running the show under the hood, and no amount of gritting your teeth fixes a hormone panel that's been beat up by years of stress, bad sleep, and compulsive dopamine hits.

The good news: hormones respond fast to the right inputs. Dial them in and the cravings stop feeling like a freight train and start feeling like background noise.

### Why Lust Feels Louder Than You

Testosterone isn't just about muscles. It binds to your amygdala and shifts how you process anxiety, risk, and reward. Compulsive porn use hijacks the same mesolimbic dopamine circuits that drive drug addiction—greater activation in the ventral striatum, anterior cingulate, and amygdala to sexual cues, plus stronger attentional bias toward them. That's why one trigger can eat your whole afternoon. [Neurobiology of Compulsive Sexual Behavior](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4677151/) | [Huberman on testosterone & estrogen](https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/the-science-of-how-to-optimize-testosterone-and-estrogen)

Layer in chronic stress and your cortisol eats your testosterone for lunch. Low T plus a sensitized dopamine system is the exact recipe for "I didn't even want to, it just happened."

You're not broken. Your chemistry is miscalibrated. Let's fix it.

### Lift Heavy, Not Long

Resistance training is the single most underrated testosterone lever you've got. Heavy loads, compound lifts, short rest—your endocrine system rewards it.

The protocol that actually moves the needle: 6 sets of 10 reps at ~80% of 1RM, 2 minutes rest between sets, on big compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, bench, and chin-ups. Don't train to failure. Keep the session under 75 minutes or cortisol starts creeping up and tanking testosterone. [Duncan French protocol breakdown](https://podcastnotes.org/huberman-lab/episode-45-dr-duncan-french-how-to-exercise-for-optimal-strength-gains-hormone-optimization-huberman-lab/)

Three sessions a week. Weights before cardio, always. Cardio first cuts into the testosterone response of the lifting session that follows.

### Cold Exposure for Vasodilation and Dopamine

Cold showers and ice baths aren't just for clout. The vasoconstriction-then-vasodilation cycle pumps fresh blood through your reproductive system, and the cold triggers a sustained dopamine release that lasts hours—the clean version of the hit your brain has been chasing from porn.

Two to five minutes of cold, a few times a week. Morning or post-lift. Don't overthink it.

### Fix Sleep or Nothing Else Works

If your sleep is wrecked, your T is wrecked. A meta-analysis of 1,823 men found obstructive sleep apnea is inversely associated with testosterone, independent of age and BMI, and severe OSA drops levels the hardest. [OSA and male testosterone meta-analysis](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34536053/)

Practical moves:
- Nose-breathe during the day, consider mouth taping at night if your jaw drops open.
- Cool, dark, phone-out-of-the-bedroom.
- If you snore loud enough to wake your partner, get screened for apnea. Seriously.

No amount of Tongkat Ali fixes six hours of broken sleep.

### Morning Sunlight Is Free Dopamine

Ten minutes of bright light in your eyes within the first hour of waking anchors your cortisol rhythm in the morning (where you want it) and sets up a cleaner dopamine response the rest of the day. It also supports the upstream hormones (LH/FSH) that tell your testes to make testosterone. [Huberman on testosterone & estrogen](https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/the-science-of-how-to-optimize-testosterone-and-estrogen)

No sunglasses, don't stare at the sun, just get outside. Overcast works. If you live somewhere dark, a bright light panel does the job.

### Supplements That Actually Have Evidence

Most supplements are nonsense. These have real RCTs behind them.

- **Tongkat Ali (Eurycoma longifolia, 200 mg/day).** In a randomized controlled trial in moderately stressed adults, 200 mg/day for 4 weeks raised salivary testosterone by 37% and dropped cortisol by 16%. A separate 12-week RCT in aging men confirmed the testosterone bump and cortisol reduction at the same dose. [Talbott 2013 RCT](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3669033/) | [Physta aging males RCT 2021](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8254464/)
- **Vitamin D3 (2000–5000 IU/day)** if your blood level is below ~40 ng/mL. Fix the deficiency, don't megadose blindly.
- **Zinc (15–30 mg/day)** and **magnesium glycinate (300–400 mg/day)** at night. Support the production floor.

Get bloodwork first. Supplementing without baselines is just expensive urine.

### Kill Cortisol, Rebuild Testosterone

Cortisol and testosterone fight for the same raw materials. If you're stuck in chronic fight-or-flight, your T will stay in the gutter no matter how hard you lift.

Daily non-negotiables:
- 5–10 minutes of slow nasal breathing or meditation (physiological sighs work fast).
- Walks without your phone.
- One hard "no" a day to something that drains you.

Stress isn't the enemy—unregulated stress is. Build the off-switch.

### When to Get a Coach

Hormones get you 70% of the way. The last 30% is behavior, environment, and accountability.

If you've been white-knuckling this alone for months or years, get a coach or therapist who works with compulsive sexual behavior. Cognitive-behavioral therapy has real data behind it, and a good coach compresses the learning curve by a factor of ten.

### The Bottom Line

Lust addiction isn't a character flaw. It's a hormone-plus-behavior loop that responds to inputs.

Lift heavy, sleep hard, get sunlight, get cold, supplement what's actually proven, and kill your cortisol leaks. Stack those and the cravings quiet down on their own.

Start with one this week. Lifting three times. Ten minutes of morning light. One 3-minute cold shower. Don't try to run the whole protocol on day one—pick the smallest move you'll actually do, and do it for 30 days.

You've got this.

— Chad

(If you want a personalized plan and someone in your corner, message me on [WhatsApp](https://wa.me/15555555555). Let's get your chemistry back on your side.)

## References

1. Kraus SW, Voon V, Potenza MN. Neurobiology of Compulsive Sexual Behavior: Emerging Science. *Neuropsychopharmacology*. 2016. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4677151/

2. Huberman A. The Science of How to Optimize Testosterone & Estrogen. *Huberman Lab Podcast*. https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/the-science-of-how-to-optimize-testosterone-and-estrogen

3. French D, Huberman A. Episode 45 — How to Exercise for Optimal Strength Gains & Hormone Optimization. *Huberman Lab*. https://podcastnotes.org/huberman-lab/episode-45-dr-duncan-french-how-to-exercise-for-optimal-strength-gains-hormone-optimization-huberman-lab/

4. Su L, Meng Y-H, et al. Association between obstructive sleep apnea and male serum testosterone: A systematic review and meta-analysis. *Andrology*. 2021. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34536053/

5. Talbott SM, Talbott JA, George A, Pugh M. Effect of Tongkat Ali on stress hormones and psychological mood state in moderately stressed subjects. *Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition*. 2013. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3669033/

6. Ismail SB, et al. Effect of Eurycoma longifolia standardised aqueous root extract–Physta® on testosterone levels and quality of life in ageing male subjects: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled multicentre study. *Food & Nutrition Research*. 2021. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8254464/