Long Road to Recovery, But Absolutely Worth It

This is a long story, but I feel the need to get this out into the community. Maybe it’s part of the healing process for me.

I’m 35 years old, never married, never had sex, and have destructively used porn and masturbation since I was 18 to up until recently. That’s at least 17 years of literally wasting away my health, my time, my relationships, and many other things. The beginning for me was when I discovered an old nudie magazine of my dad’s back in middle school. In high school I found creative ways to try and obtain porn through friends, while keeping it all hidden from my parents. I even spent a bunch of time surfing those blocked grainy pay channels for adult movies while my parents were away.

During my first year of college, things really got out of hand with the high-speed internet that was available in my dorm. My roommate walked in on me one time, and even the embarrassment of that incident didn’t deter me. My college friends would go on dates with women, have relationships, and generally just explore and enjoy life. I would hang out and party for sure, but would easily get stressed out from school or work and turn to porn and masturbation for emotional relief. I went through college without going on many dates or having a single relationship.

After graduation, I got a good paying engineering job but the stress from work kept building and I turned to porn and masturbation time and time again. My libido was way down and I needed more and more hardcore and fetish material to get off. I met a nice and attractive woman at work back in 2007 and we dated for a while before she broke it off. I couldn’t emotionally let things go and had fantasies of winning her back and was convinced that we were meant to be and would eventually get married, I just wasn’t ready yet. So I tried to kept in contact with her, but my desperation and inappropriate persistence resulted in her taking me to HR. At the time I was crushed. After a while I reached out to her again and that predictably blew up. To say my self-esteem was low is an understatement.

In desperation I signed up for a couple different online dating sites in 2012. I went on a ton of dates with women, but very few seemed to want to hang around. A relationship seemed elusive until I finally met someone who clicked with me. We ended up dating for about 3 months. Things progressed naturally as they do in a relationship and we finally were going to have sex. For me it would have been the first time and I was incredibly excited. One major problem though, I couldn’t get it up. She was actually very understanding of my embarrassment, and supportive of trying to help in any way she could. What she didn’t know was that I was addicted to PMO. We fooled around after that, but I could never perform when it came to intercourse. After trying for about a month and half more, I broke the relationship off, coming up with a bunch of BS superficial reasons on how we weren’t a match. Now that I look back on it, the real reason was my embarrassment. I’m not sure exactly when my ED started, but it definitely was in full effect starting in 2012. It may have been going on for many years by that point due to my porn addiction.

In 2014 I met a very attractive women at work, and we seemed to click right off the bat. We started regularly dating, she invited me over to her place, and made me an excellent dinner. She pulled out all the stops. We made out afterwards, and one thing led to another. She wanted me bad…really bad. It shouldn’t have been a shock, but I couldn’t get it up then either. Again, I was embarrassed and made some silly excuse on why I had to go home. I started emotionally withdrawing from her after that. She was confuse, and I think she thought something was wrong with her. I tried to continue things but the damage was done, and she ended taking a job at another company. At the time I thought her experience with me was the reason for her leaving – and now I’m sure it was a factor.

All the while I turned to porn and masturbation to relieve the stress of work and daily life. On some days I was going at it four or five times, with longer sessions up to an hour and a half. I had to keep escalating to more and more bizarre material just to reach orgasm. Sometimes, I would go for so long that the friction would cause my penis to bleed. I was so entranced with porn during these sessions that after a feeble orgasm I would look down and be surprised that my dick was bleeding. I didn’t even notice it until I had snapped out of that trance.

Finally, I got it through my thick head that this problem was far bigger than I thought. In 2015 I stumbled across the Your Brain On Porn website and devoured the articles and accounts of others there struggling with PMO. After a herculean effort in self-discipline, I was able to stop looking at porn for about 6 months. I still masturbated during this time, but it was only once or twice a week. I started running again and was steadily losing weight. For a 6’ 1” dude, I weighed 243 lbs and had a body fat percentage of over 25. Back in high school when I was running Cross Country, I weighed 160 lbs. Kind of funny but my driver’s license still has that weight listed.

I tried online dating again, and in late 2015 I met an incredible woman. I found her physically, emotionally, and intellectually irresistible. We had so much in common it was surprising to both of us. Things just worked and everything in the relationship went smoothly. I felt like I had hit the jackpot and wondered where this woman had been all my life. I loved her deeply and enjoyed hanging out with her family. We continued to be a couple all throughout 2016 and talked about marriage, kids, and buying a house together. I’m skeptical of the idea of a soul mate, but with her that’s exactly how I felt. She was completely at ease with taking things slow at first and very emotionally supportive and in tune with me. I thought I had found my future wife.

In early 2016 I took a new job within the same company that came with a promotion and a nice pay bump. At first, I was excited and eager to do well in the new job, but quickly realized my boss was incredibly demanding. At the time I didn’t know what was going on, but he was a horrible person and a political animal. He worked behind the scenes and spread rumors and lies about his own employees and about people on other teams. I now believe he was a classic narcissist and would mess with people to solidify his own sense of personal power, and to cover up his shortcomings. I caught him in several bald-faced lies, and brought it up to him when we were one on one. He played it off as a simple miscommunication, but after that my goose was cooked. I was his new target. Things progressively deteriorated at work, and I turned back to porn and masturbation for relief.

My relationship with my wonderful girlfriend, whom I wanted to be my future wife, slowly deteriorated as well. I became emotionally withdrawn from her over time. I started declining to go to family events with her, and didn’t make much of an effort in the relationship. I was almost entirely focused on the situation at work, and completely exhausted from it. I told her about the porn and masturbation, and while she was initially understanding and wanted to do anything she could to help. I think when she realized it was a much bigger problem, and that I wasn’t making progress on it, that she started to emotionally withdraw from me as well.

All this time I couldn’t get an erection with her to save my life. I found her very physically attractive. It’s like my mind recognized and understood what I wanted to do, but my body couldn’t do it. Now I know it was actually the other way around. My body was physically capable, but PMO had burned out the arousal pathways in my brain. She was a saint, and waited over a year with no intercourse, despite countless attempts. In past relationships, she was very selective with her partners and was a virgin at 28 when we met. At the time I was 31. I never told her that I had never had sex before either, and that it would be a new and exciting experience for me as well. Stress at work continued, and I got sucked further into PMO. Everything came to a head in early 2017 and she dumped me. I had withdrawn from her and her family, from my family, and friends because of my stress and porn addiction.

Depression gripped me. I vowed another serious attempt at ending PMO for good, and to take better care of my health. On a lark in mid-2017, I had my testosterone levels tested and they were so low, they were equivalent to the average for an 85 year old man. I was obese, depressed, fatigued, stressed, angry, and withdrawn. Suicide crossed my mind, but I came to the conclusion that it would have been supremely selfish for me to go through with it. I couldn’t do that to my family.

I kept pressing on, trying different approaches and techniques to ending PMO. Over the next year and half, I kept investigating into the cause of my abysmal testosterone levels. Each new blood test had surprising results, and I slowly found out I had massive vitamin, mineral, and amino acid deficiencies. Using baby steps over a period of about a year, I started cleaning up my diet and supplementing what I couldn’t get through diet alone. I’d go back and get more blood tests to verify my diet and supplements were working, and try different things if they weren’t. Many years ago, I had a bad experience with a medical doctor, so I tried to do a lot of this investigative work for my health by myself. I made some good progress, but ultimately, I could have saved precious time by putting in the effort to find a good doctor.

Little by little, as my nutrient levels got back into normal ranges, I started feeling better. Earlier this year (2019) I began running again, and have been getting back to a healthy weight. My energy levels are through the roof. I used to get 9+ hours of sleep and feel tired throughout the next day. Now I sleep about 5 – 6 hours per night and wake up refreshed. My testosterone levels are still low, but I’m working with an endocrinologist to see what my options are.

It’s been several months since I looked at porn. I can honestly say I have zero desire to use porn anymore. I’ve tried hard this year to replace my porn addiction with healthy habits like cooking nutritious meals, running, reading, and spending more time with friends and family. It’s been working! I’ve had a lot of time to think. Porn physically disgusts me now and has caused so much pain in my life, I can’t imagine ever going back. I believe that porn has been so destructive in my life that it’s literally not an option for me anymore. There were good days and bad, but once I stopped worrying about counting the days without PMO and just focusing on today, things got easier. I couldn’t tell you the exact date I last used porn because I was focused on other more important things in my life. I masturbate a couple times a month, and feel totally fine with not doing it for weeks at a time. Morning erections are now an increasingly frequent thing for me, and it’s pretty damn awesome! I suspect that getting the proper nutrition has helped my body and mind to heal and to function better. I believe proper nutrition has helped to increase my willpower. All those years of PMO and stress likely caused all kinds of nutritional deficiencies.

I reached out to my previous girlfriend in the hopes of communicating with her again, and perhaps just maybe rekindling what we had. She’s currently engaged to what sounds like a wonderful man. It took a little while but I’m at peace with what has happened. My life is richer for having had her in it, no matter how brief and fleeting it all seems now.

My focus lately has been to deal with the grief of missing out on so many years of my life. A couple books I’ve read have been a huge help with that grief. I still do want to find my spouse, get married, and have a family. I’ve moved out of my tiny apartment of the last 8 years and rented a house! I strongly desire to continue improving my health, on being more social, and improving the quality of my relationships. Friends, family, and relationships are a much bigger priority in my life now, with work coming in a distant second. I feel like I’ve woken up from a 17-year long nightmare where I was numb to the world. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do in life and am optimistic for the future! Thanks for reading

 

Thanks for the kind words guys, I really appreciate it! This was really hard for me to get down on paper and put out there, but I'm feeling better about doing it now.

I believe that persistence is key. One of the things I realized over the last year is that I was trying to be perfect in everything I do.

I thought that success and failure were two different paths, so if I was failing then I wasn't succeeding. This is a faulty assumption. It would paralyze me into not trying again because I thought all I could do was fail.

But in reality, each failure brings you closer to success. Failure and success are on the same path, and failure is just a temporary stop on your path to success. All you have to do is keep moving, keep learning, and try different approaches.

 

I got my degree in Mechanical Engineering, IMO a good generalist degree that allows you the flexibility of working in a bunch of different industries.

Keep working at it man, baby steps! If you haven't already done it, might be worth getting your doctor to order some blood tests to see where your nutrient levels are at (vitamins, minerals, amino acids). You can also order those tests yourself online, but it's kinda expensive that way. Getting the proper nutrients in my diet was a big help for me. After my levels were brought in line, I was feeling better, had more energy, losing weight, and felt that I had more willpower. Brain fog was an issue for me too, and that is mostly gone now.