People who abstain for a while often describe a stretch where libido drops away, arousal goes quiet, and mood flattens. It's called the flatline. It shows up consistently across abstinence journals and personal accounts — a systematic analysis of over a hundred of them found this kind of experience described repeatedly.
So something is being reported, by a lot of people, consistently. That's worth knowing about.
What we can't tell you: how long it lasts, whether it happens to everyone, what causes it, or what it means. It has never been formally studied. Anyone giving you a timeline — "days 14 to 45" — is repeating forum lore with a confident face. There is no research behind those numbers.
The practical guidance we can give:
- If it happens, it's commonly reported and not evidence something is wrong with you.
- Don't treat it as proof of damage requiring more extreme abstinence. That logic runs in a bad direction.
- Do treat persistent low mood as its own thing needing its own attention. A flat stretch during a behaviour change is one thing; two weeks of not caring about anything is depression, and it wants a GP, not a streak counter.
- If arousal difficulties persist beyond a change in habits, see a doctor. Erectile problems have plenty of physical causes — cardiovascular, hormonal, metabolic — and attributing them to porn without checking is how people miss something treatable.
Takeaways
- Consistently reported, never formally studied. Both halves of that are true.
- Any timeline you're given for it is invented.
- Two weeks of not caring about anything isn't a flatline. That wants a GP.
Sources and how strong they are (5)
- 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
- AnecdotalA qualitative analysis of 104 rebooting abstinence journals found abstinence felt impossible at first and became attainable with cognitive-behavioural strategies plus social support. The benefits members attributed to abstinence were a regained sense of control over their use, and improvements in mood, energy, mental clarity, focus, confidence, motivation and productivity, less emotional numbness, and social and sexual functioning. Sleep is not among them — the paper's only mention of sleep is a healthier sleep routine adopted as one of the lifestyle changes made to support abstinence. The same paper is also the only systematic catalogue of what members themselves say triggers them: external cues (electronic media and social feeds, seeing attractive people in real life, being alone in one's bedroom), internal cues, chiefly negative affect, and the "chaser effect" — cravings that follow any sexual activity engaged in during abstinence. Alcohol appears nowhere in it. Self-report only; third variables not ruled out.
- Fernandez, Kuss & Griffiths 2021, Archives of Sexual Behavior 50(2):711-728, doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01858-w, PMID 33403533, PMC7889567
- Mixed evidencePorn-induced erectile dysfunction is a clinical hypothesis supported by case reports and clinician reports. Frequency-based population studies have not produced consistent associations, and the one longitudinal study to measure erectile function with a validated instrument over a year found that self-reported problematic use correlated with erectile difficulty at any single moment, that mere use did not, and that no pornography variable predicted the trajectory of erectile function. It remains contested.
- Park BY, Wilson G, Berger J, Christman M, Reina B, Bishop F, Klam WP, Doan AP 2016, Behav Sci 6(3):17, doi:10.3390/bs6030017, PMID 27527226, PMC5039517 — carries a 2018 correction, Behav Sci 8(6):55, doi:10.3390/bs8060055, PMID 29857562, disclosing that co-author Gary Wilson is the author of Your Brain on Porn and removing the academic editor's name; see C58
- Cuts toward an association — Jacobs T, Geysemans B, Van Hal G, Glazemakers I, Fog-Poulsen K, Vermandel A, De Wachter S, De Win G 2021, JMIR Public Health Surveill 7(10):e32542, doi:10.2196/32542, PMID 34534092, PMC8569536
- A practitioner magazine commentary, not a peer-reviewed study — Kirby M 2021, Trends in Urology & Men's Health 12(2):6-10, doi:10.1002/tre.791
- Grubbs JB & Gola M 2019, J Sex Med 16(1):111-125, doi:10.1016/j.jsxm.2018.11.004, PMID 30621919
- Dwulit & Rzymski 2019, J Clin Med 8(7):914, PMID 31247949
- Landripet & Štulhofer 2015, J Sex Med 12(5):1136-1139, PMID 25816904
- Prause & Pfaus 2015, Sex Med 3(2):90-98, PMID 26185674
- Not a retraction — a published Comment on Prause & Pfaus 2015: Isenberg RA 2015, Sex Med 3(3):219-221, doi:10.1002/sm2.71
- Mixed evidenceSexual images interfere with cognitive performance while they are in front of you. In a laboratory working-memory task, performance was worse in the pornographic-picture condition than with neutral, positive or negative pictures (n=28 healthy adults); men in treatment for compulsive sexual behaviour were slowed by pornographic backgrounds in proportion to how much pornography they had used that week (38 patients, 31 controls); and men scoring higher on a problematic-use measure handled a multitasking paradigm mixing pornographic and non-pornographic images less evenly than others, either over-working or avoiding the pornographic set (n=104). Performance away from sexual cues is a separate question, and the answer there is much weaker. In a laboratory comparison of high- versus low-severity problematic pornography use, the two groups did not differ on standard executive-function tests with no sexual stimuli present, differing only on self-reported impulsivity. The largest clinically validated study does find a general deficit, but a small one and not specific to pornography: across gaming, buying-shopping, pornography and social-network use, the pathological-use group performed worst on every cognitive task, with effect sizes at or below partial eta-squared = 0.06, while the risky-use and non-problematic groups barely differed on any behavioural measure.
- Laier, Schulte & Brand 2013, J Sex Res 50(7):642-652, doi:10.1080/00224499.2012.716873, PMID 23167900
- Sinke et al. 2020, NeuroImage Clin 27:102308, doi:10.1016/j.nicl.2020.102308, PMID 32599553
- Schiebener, Laier & Brand 2015, J Behav Addict 4(1):14-21, doi:10.1556/JBA.4.2015.1.5, PMID 25786495
- Müller & Antons 2023, Front Psychiatry 14:1191297, doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1191297, PMID 37564242
- Müller et al. 2025, Am J Psychiatry 182(7):660-670, doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.20240486, PMID 40432342
- Counterweight the entry is graded against — Draps et al. 2021, J Behav Addict 10(3):657-674, doi:10.1556/2006.2021.00056, PMID 34550905
- Counterweight the entry is graded against — Grant & Chamberlain 2023, CNS Spectr 28(3):357-360, doi:10.1017/S1092852922000785, PMID 35593452
- Counterweight the entry is graded against — Christensen et al. 2024, J Behav Addict 13(3):823-840, doi:10.1556/2006.2024.00041, PMID 39141435
- Not a source for pornography specifically — Ioannidis et al. 2019, Br J Psychiatry 215(5):639-646, doi:10.1192/bjp.2019.3, PMID 30784392
- Anecdotal"Brain fog" - concentration difficulty and slowed thinking in the hours after a heavy session - is reported consistently by people who identify a problem with their pornography use, and mental clarity is among the benefits most commonly claimed for abstaining. All of it is self-report. The only randomised abstinence study to measure anything of the kind - 176 regular users assigned to seven days of abstinence or use as usual - found no difference between the groups on a daily withdrawal composite that included concentration items, and no study has ever measured cognitive performance before and after a period of abstinence. Henry et al.'s 2025 ecological momentary assessment study in Archives of Sexual Behavior - 22 people, four weeks, five prompts a day - did find self-rated difficulty thinking rising after an episode and decaying back to baseline over several hours, but its episodes combined pornography with masturbation and the effect tracked shame, guilt and low mood, so it cannot separate a cognitive effect from an emotional one. The most recent expert review of the field lists post-use concentration difficulty as an open research question rather than a finding, and notes it may be secondary to poor sleep or to low mood rather than a direct effect of the use itself.
- Fernandez, Kuss, Griffiths 2021, Arch Sex Behav 50(2):711-728, doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01858-w, PMID 33403533, PMC7889567
- Ince et al. 2023, Sci Rep 13(1):18193, doi:10.1038/s41598-023-45459-8, PMID 37875697, PMC10598215
- Fernandez et al. 2023, Arch Sex Behav 52(4):1819-1840, doi:10.1007/s10508-022-02519-w, PMID 36652136, PMC9847461
- Henry et al. 2025, Arch Sex Behav 54(9):3313-3334, doi:10.1007/s10508-025-03287-z, PMID 41269492, PMC12675693
- Ince et al. 2026, J Behav Addict 15(1):32-98, doi:10.1556/2006.2025.00337, PMID 41879870, PMC13132360
- Relevant, and cuts the other way — Lewczuk et al. 2022, J Behav Addict 11(4):979-993, doi:10.1556/2006.2022.00076, PMID 36269607, PMC9881655
- Not used as support for recovery of cognition — Negash et al. 2016, J Sex Res 53(6):689-700, doi:10.1080/00224499.2015.1025123, PMID 26305628
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