Has it been a long time since you last had sex with­out Tina (or oth­er chems)?
If so, rebuild­ing a sat­is­fy­ing sex life with­out Tina can be quite dif­fi­cult.
This, for lots of men, is the great­est chal­lenge.
Sex and Tina often become strong­ly linked.
Learn­ing to redis­cov­er the plea­sures of sex with­out Tina takes time, effort, patience and cre­ativ­i­ty.

A com­mon com­plaint among for­mer users is that they now find “nor­mal” sex bor­ing, and that they find it hard to become aroused.
This is part­ly because the brain is now chem­i­cal­ly imbal­anced.
Tina floods the brain with dopamine.
Dopamine gen­er­ates a feel­ing of plea­sure and sat­is­fac­tion.
Repeat­ed and abnor­mal­ly high releas­es of dopamine and Tina itself dam­age the neu­ro­trans­mit­ters.
The longer and more inten­sive­ly you’ve been using Tina, the longer it will take for your brain to recov­er and for you to enjoy sex with­out Tina.
This can take any­where from sev­er­al months to more than a year.

The process is also defined quite sig­nif­i­cant­ly by a vari­ety of emo­tion­al aspects.
A lot of men use Tina to boost their con­fi­dence and sense of free­dom.
Or to block out cer­tain thoughts.
For instance, thoughts about HIV or hepati­tis C, age­ing, dis­com­fort with one’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or needs.
All such thoughts evap­o­rate with Tina, which allows guys to do things they might not oth­er­wise have dared.
When you stop tak­ing Tina, you will have to rely on your own resources.


– Mourn­ing
– Tim­ing


Mourn­ing

Life with­out Tina also means a sex life with­out Tina.
Let go of the idea that you will some­day have sex on Tina again.
This will only feed your crav­ing and can lead to a relapse.

For some men, let­ting go feels like mourn­ing.

They actu­al­ly go through phas­es of mourn­ing: denial, anger, nego­ti­a­tion, depres­sion and accep­tance.
Denial: “Maybe I don’t real­ly need to stop?”
Angry: “God­dammit, I’ll use Tina if I want to!”
Nego­ti­ate: “Sure­ly, once a month isn’t unrea­son­able?”
Depres­sion: “I’ll nev­er be able to have nor­mal sex again.”
Accep­tance: “I can live with­out Tina, and my sex life will be okay again.”

Quit­ting Tina can feel like los­ing some­thing, or hav­ing some­thing tak­en from you.
But try to remem­ber that your sex­u­al life was rather extreme.
You expe­ri­enced things that could not have hap­pened with­out chems.
Put your mem­o­ries in per­spec­tive.
Accept that you expe­ri­enced the “impos­si­ble”.

Do not allow your­self to accept the idea that sex with­out chems is bor­ing or tame.
The emo­tion­al con­nec­tion you felt when you were high was caused by the chems, not by the con­tact.
It may have felt like you’d expe­ri­enced a deep con­nec­tion with your sex part­ner.
But a lot of men say they realised after­wards that the iden­ti­ty of their sex­u­al part­ner hadn’t actu­al­ly mat­tered.
Sex with­out chems is not a watered-down ver­sion of sex on Tina; it is some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent.
It can be a chance for gen­uine con­nec­tion with your sex­u­al part­ner.


Tim­ing

When should you have sex with­out Tina again?
That large­ly depends on your per­son­al sit­u­a­tion.
How severe is your crav­ing?
How strong is your sup­port net­work?
Are you in a rela­tion­ship?
If you had a sat­is­fy­ing sex life and could con­nect inti­mate­ly before you began using chems, then you know it’s pos­si­ble to do so again.
If you had prob­lems with these before Tina, the chal­lenge is greater.
In which case, con­sid­er see­ing a sex ther­a­pist.

Read more about tim­ing
Sim­ply think­ing about sex can make you long for some Tina.
This is why men who are con­stant­ly horny feel like using all the time.
As a result, some men delib­er­ate­ly avoid sex.
If you find that the idea of sex imme­di­ate­ly trig­gers your crav­ing, it’s bet­ter to avoid hav­ing sex until the asso­ci­a­tion is weak­er.

Some men lose inter­est in sex.
After hav­ing noth­ing but sex on Tina for so long, they decide to put sex on the back­burn­er for a while.
Some­times for up to a year; some­times longer.
This allows them to focus on recov­ery.
And allows them to avoid being in sit­u­a­tions that trig­ger the need to use.
The brain gets the time it needs to recov­er.
It can even be a relief to not be pre­oc­cu­pied with sex.

The idea of hav­ing sex with­out being high makes some men ner­vous, some­times even fright­ened.
Don’t let such fears paral­yse you.
Con­tin­u­ous­ly putting off sex with­out chems will even­tu­al­ly make it seem impos­si­ble.
Unless you decide to give up sex com­plete­ly, you will even­tu­al­ly have to take a first step.
Under­stand that you’re far from alone in hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties with sex and sex­u­al­i­ty in gen­er­al.
Give your­self time, and don’t expect to have amaz­ing sex right away.
You may need to first get used to sim­ply being inti­mate with­out being high.
See it as a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery that may take years.

Oth­ers pre­fer to go straight back to hav­ing sex with­out Tina.
They can’t imag­ine tak­ing a break from sex.
Be aware that sex can trig­ger your desire for chems, and pos­es the risk of a relapse.
Nonethe­less, it isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly wrong to try hav­ing sex again so soon.
By expe­ri­enc­ing sex with­out Tina, you will be dis­cov­er­ing new pos­si­bil­i­ties and forg­ing new con­nec­tions in your brain.
It may be dif­fi­cult and feel awk­ward in the begin­ning, but at least it’s real.
You may dis­cov­er that cer­tain things just don’t work for you with­out Tina.
But do not allow your­self to use under any cir­cum­stances, and give your­self the time to re-dis­cov­er your­self.