This is the honest answer and it is not a satisfying one. The experience is well attested; the timeline is fiction.
The evidence base is a qualitative analysis of rebooting journals in which a drop in libido, arousal and mood during abstinence is described again and again. Self-report, no control group, and no measurement of how long it went on. There is no other research. So "two to six weeks", "days 14 to 45" and every other range you have seen are not estimates from data. They are guesses that got repeated until they sounded like facts.
A deadline is also a manufactured way to feel like a failure the day after it. If someone tells you it ends at week six, and week seven arrives, you now have a second problem that the number invented.
What is worth watching instead is the thing the timeline distracts from. Low mood that lifts as habits settle is one thing. Two weeks of not caring about anything is depression, and it wants a GP. Persistent arousal difficulty wants a doctor too, because it has many established physical causes. Neither of those is a flatline to wait out.
Where this comes from
Read the full lesson: The flatline, and what we honestly know →
Sources and how strong they are (1)
- AnecdotalThe "flatline" — a period of dropped libido, mood or arousal during abstinence — is consistently reported in abstinence journals and is named in the review literature, but it has never been measured prospectively or in a general population.
- Fernandez DP, Kuss DJ & Griffiths MD 2021, Arch Sex Behav 50(2):711-728, doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01858-w, PMID 33403533, PMC7889567
- Mead D & Sharpe M 2020, Int J Environ Res Public Health 17(10):3462, doi:10.3390/ijerph17103462
- Ince C, Antons S, Ashton S, Borgogna NC, Brand M, Briken P, Castro-Calvo J, Chen L, Coleman E, Efrati Y, Fernández DP, Fuss J et al. 2026, J Behav Addict 15(1):32-98, doi:10.1556/2006.2025.00337, PMID 41879870, PMC13132360
More evidence in the app.
The full 41-lesson course is in the app, and every claim in it is graded the same way as the ones you just read. Free.
Coming to iOS and Android.