Going from 3 to a 8 in one go is dangerous and might cause your ear to split go up to a 5 wait a month then go up to a 7 and so on… It will be foolish if you try to go up so far in one go.

You mean like this?

I’m currently on an 8mm. I started with a stud I had in for years and then bought a titanium circular barbell which was slightly larger than the wire on the stud. From there I added another for a few days, then another, then another etc till I had 4 through the same hole. From there I managed to get the smallest flesh tunnel through and just went up every week or so another mm till eventually I got to where I wanted.

I suppose you could always buy one of those ‘horn’ taper type posts and keep advancing it through periodically. I recall when I was stretching mine, I looked into it on the net at right and wrong ways to do it and going too wide too soon can prolapse the hole in that the inside of the hole kinda explodes out and gets infected.

Slow and steady mate.