How did your addiction start?

I wish I could go back to the days before the internet when certain content wasn't as easily accessible. I just remember the 80's porn scenes on VHS with the music playing in the background. It makes me feel very sad that I remember everything.

 

Yeah, we programmed that junk into our minds. I could have learnt Sanskrit or how to play a classical instrument or mastered a martial art. Oh well, I can only start from where I am now.

 

Out of curiosity, and by other kids. They were talking about porn so I was watching porn too. Well, I think that also mental problems and rough experiences in school were cause of watching porn too.

Damn, I could be smarter but nothing big happened. I regained myself.
I was watching porn between 2011 and 2017. I am glad that, when I turned 18 I stopped it.

 

I think the key for stopping porn is to do a "brainwashing". This is what helps me.
Basically, you need to reinforce healthy opinion about porn.
For example, you are thinking for 15 minutes thoughts like "Porn is boring, Porn is not doing any good for me, watching Porn will not give me a job ect."
When you feel an urge, your neural pathway with such thoughts turns on and you can resist it better. It's like, you are reinforcing a new point of view on porn. Because, to start watching porn you need to have some kind of positive opinion on porn. I think those thoughts are still the reason why you relapse or you just feel like you are depended on porn. So, I think this is the reason you need to build new perspective on pornography, sexuality ect.
I am not a psychologist, it's my "psuedo-theory". At least, it works for me

 

I used to try and be this pretend psychologist and attempt to convince myself that the 'positive' aspect of porn was simply to encourage a biological release as a single guy without a girlfriend it must be OK if the images were softcore to some degree, 'ít's only natural' it took me a while to realise the distortion and view of porn was getting more and more extreme and this was obviously not OK but I didn't see it when I was in the zone of clicking and searching. I even used to search for videos that have hot women dressed as nurses and doctors giving instruction thinking it was OK because it's 'educational'. How deluded was I! I'm now trying never to use these sites again and remain focused in the real world!

 

Yes, it was similar with me. I used to convince myself that I am doing a good thing, like porn was entertainment, educational and natural at the same time.

 

Pretty sure it started with obscene music videos on tv. Wasn’t porn but it was the gateway that led me down that path. Scantly clad women dancing gave me a sensation I’d never experienced up until that point. Later down the line the family got internet, which led to me looking up those old music videos with access to them at any time. That in turn led to cam girls on YouTube/MySpace, and before I knew it, flat out porn. As I’ve gotten older I cut hardcore porn out entirely, but I’m still battling the urges for soft core material, where this all began.

 

When I was 12-15 I saw an advertisement online on a website about "call me" or something. I clicked on that image and it redirected me to a porn site where I found so many naked images of girls(even of my society). I immediately closed the site and turned off computer because of the fear from my parents. After few days I intented to visit that site again and I did. I started enjoying it that made me search for porn videos. thats how I got addicted to watching porns .

 

As a 50 year old mine was the classic progression...

• Magazine
• X rated cinema
• VHS video
• DVD
• The internet... which finally tipped me over the edge

 

I was like 12-13 yrs old when my uncle changed his home computer and gave me the old one. Curious i was exploring literally every files and folders after i got bored plaing pinball and solitaire and at one point there was this videos in a hidden folder on desktop wich somehow i found after plyng with my mouse. Now the issue was not tht i wached . I didn’t really knew what that people was doing over there at all until one morning when my gramma saw me watching it . She rushed so bad and so agresively into me that it maked me inside my head. From that moment slowly i become what i m today seeking help on this forum.

 

12 - 37 yo progression:
12 - fashion magazines
13 - added xxx rated late might movies on TV
15 - 17 first access to "dirty photos" on dial up internet
17 - 21 still dial up modem + started buying pirated dvd-rips of porn movies
21 - 37 got access to high speed internet and "off the cliff" I went

 

I think there were two, three key-moments during my adolescent/early teenage years that triggered the start of my 14-15 years of moderate PMO-addiction:

-When "Kazaa" became available for file-sharing (including porn-clips and films) back in 2002 at age 14, I started to get more hooked on porn and started to think about it more as I had those clips on my hard-drive, readily available for view. What made it more exciting was the fact that I couldn't really view it all until it was all downloaded so I was never completely sure about what I had just obtained which increased the excitement even more.
-Those old VHS-tapes (with a few hours of mixed porn recorded from cable-TV channels) I found in my dad's drawer that same year. I was thrilled with excitement when I found them and literally couldn't stop watching the material once it appeared on the TV-screen. After that, I stayed up some late nights just to record some new material that I could watch for a few weeks. It is from those adult movie-scenes I really got a skewed and twisted image of sex, sexuality, women, social interactions and interpersonal communication overall that would haunt and plague me for years.

-Around 2005-/06 (at age 17-18) when porn-videos and video-clips could be streamed on the internet directly and didn't have to be downloaded. The selection increased a hundredfold compared to previously and literally gave access to unlimited amounts of material, just a few clicks and seconds away which was mind-blowing and also made the addiction escalate and become more frequent.

 

I remember spending tons of time trying to download pictures or short video clips on dial-up internet. It seems like that was the 1800s now.

 

Probably the first time I had access to 56k internet when I was around 12, watching nude pictures of Lara Croft. And around that time too there was some softcore pictures on CD roms that I looked. Then a little bit after hentai videos on my dad's computer.

It went out of control when I got my personal computer but I don't remember exactly how.

 

Same here..
11-13 brothers porn pics on the hard drive
13-18 dial up (pics and short clips)
18 - 31 high speed interned which pushed me to full blown pied
32 - hopefuly no more porn

 

I wouldn't call myself an addict, at most I was a proto-addict or proto-compulsive, because addiction falls into a spectrum. Similar to having hypertension, but mild hypertension differs from severe, even when agreed, both are pathological (and I recognize the addictive pathology I had, even if not full blown).

In my case it was feeling of loneliness, but in particular, prolonged romantic loneliness. I was around 30 and never had a girlfriend nor real sexual experience. Before that, porn was not an interest to me. I pretty much preferred youtube rather than porntube throughout basically all my 20s, and I was happy with that. When I was 29, a friend asked what porn I watched, and I sincerely replied "I don't watch it". In a matter of a year, I fell into the addictive trap out of ignorance and dysfunctional loneliness coping mechanism.

I think I used porn as a kind of cyberprostitute or cybermistress, in the lack of romantic human companionship, to fill that void. I felt entitled to do that at first because of loneliness and total ignorance on the harms of porn consumption (anejaculation, ED, low libido, disinterest in real relationships, and of course, addiction).

It took me about a year to realize I was taking the complete opposite direction of what I wanted, and that porn was similar to snorting cocaine: behaviorally, in the compulsion, psychologically, in the cravings and withdrawals, and neurologically, as exposed in YBOP (which I read or studied truly extensively).
Evenmore, I was feeling compulsive to porn, but at the same time, hyposexual on the inside, which never happened to me prior to that (low dopamine and testosterone signaling caused by PMO).

Every addiction isolates you, and porn in particular creates sexual dysfunctions and sexual arousal problems, and promotes sexual violence and sexual objectification... was that preparing for real? Absolutely the complete opposite. Porn is not sexual education, but sex miseducation, and not a sex trainer but a sexual crippler. You end up sexually handicapped and I firmly believe, without capacity for trust and intimacy in the emotional domain of a relationship, as it blunts emotions and reason as a zombi.

I had to say, 180° degrees from what I was longing, MUST CORRECT MY TRACK. I did it through self education on addiction in general, and porn addiction in particular. Now as part of my self therapy, I try to do as Morpheo in the Matrix, and that's part of reason I joined this community, that is, to free the minds of my fellow generation siblings, to unplug from the Skinner box and reconnect to real. Because only real can prepare you to real love.

For those of you who are also single, please read the following articles. Through my personal experience, because I made that mistake, trust my advice: porn is not a solution, on the contrary, it's creating a problem that then it will cost you considerable effort and time to repair or undo the harms (to your brain and your natural sexuality). You better had never done it, that's my take away.

https://fightthenewdrug.org/the-pro...rn-because-im-not-in-cant-get-a-relationship/

https://fightthenewdrug.org/single-persons-guide-to-fighting-against-porn-fighting-for-love/

https://fightthenewdrug.org/porn-fails-at-fulfilling-the-need-for-real-connection/