How extreme porn can trick your brain

There was a topic around some time ago which explained pretty well that but I can't remember what it was called. Yeah basically you link the pleasure while M to whatever you are seeing/experiencing to get the dopamine rush. It's more of an acquired behavior than an actual attraction, a cause-effect ingrained in your brain after so much time repeating the pattern. Really, an addict is not an addict to the object of his addiction but the pleasure it gives him, obviously needing more and more quantity and novelty when tolerance kicks in. And even if you watch straight porn, you are still jerking off to the image of a man's body, it doesn't matter if you think your attention only goes to the woman.

Good luck on the next streak!

 

I have a similar history and the same struggle (aroused by seeing d**k, but not by men in general, and the less of the dude's body I see, the better).

Wish I had never progressed beyond softcore porn. In my day, you had to go to sex shops to find magazines or videos that showed penetration . . . but I just had to see that penetration and that meant seeing a lot of d**ks

 

My Journey with porn induced HOCD


22 year old Male


This is going to be a long post, but I am sure that anyone suffering with HOCD whether porn related or induced by any other factor will be willing to spend time reading this as I know how this turns your life into living hell and the constant nagging of getting on to these forums to find someone going through the same experience as they are for reassurance. (I explain everything in detail including the exact feelings I had throughout)


I was found out about porn when I was about 10-11 years old, I was OVERWHELMED by the amount of readily available imagery and videos that were at the convenience of my own laptop. I had not yet discovered about masturbating and did not quite understand the concept until I heard my friends at school talking about it and understood the videos I see, so I started to do the same to these visuals. First off, they started as images from google of women’s boo*s and vagi**s which used to do the job very easily and I would come off in a matter of minutes. I was around the age of hitting puberty so my father gave me the talk and told me that I would get a wet dream and that is how I would know that I hit puberty. I never experienced that since I started fapping at that age and already saw the change of the premature ejaculation to actual semen and that’s how I knew that I hit puberty.


I later on found about actual porn through the internet websites and they started off as very normal tastes (vanilla) slowly they started to longer get the job done and my tastes started escalating to more aggressive porn, something I did not pay attention to or give much thought and thought, it went to virgin sex then rape and that would get the job done very smoothly for me. Slowly and without noticing, by the age of 15 my tastes escalated to watching gay porn which also started off as images and then videos and then aggressive content. I did not give much attention to that since I knew I was straight deep down and whenever I thought of relationships or marriage, I would always have a woman in mind and NEVER a romantic thought about men just pure rough sex. This addiction continued on and off for about 6-7 years on and off gay porn. Many times I would go back to straight porn because women’s parts really appealed to me.


My feelings and attraction towards females was slowly fading without me noticing (I had a crush on my 4th year of addiction to gay porn and this was my last until recently), in my head, I always thought about the fact that I am obese and probably not one pretty girl would bat an eye at me. So, this wasn’t much of an issue because I never gave much thought into crushes since these thoughts were never fulfilled and I was always friend zoned. I had one homosexual experience ( a dare ) just a stupid kiss that I did not give thought into and caused me 0 fulfillment; however, around that time I would always have the thoughts that males were attractive but as soon as I talk to them im like ew what the fuck that’s disgusting and that’s how I really felt , it was just a fetish that whenever acted upon just shows that I do not like this(no homophobia)


It was around the time I started losing weight and getting much more fit and attractive when girls started approaching me and I would know from my friends that some of their friends had crushes on me. It was one of the best feelings that I cannot even describe. Nevertheless, I was still fapping to gay porn and some straight porn.


HOCD came running. It finally hit me during my last year of university when I was close to graduation exactly around April 2019. One night I opened straight porn to check that im still straight and felt NOTHING my penis did not even twitch. I then got the thought that what if I am actually gay and that I would not be able to get married to a woman and have a family and a son (something I constantly dreamed of since being a little kid). Every time I would envision myself married to a man I would feel like this is not be, it gave me a very uncomfortable and unnatural (to myself) feeling. I suffered from this for a very long time where I would get panic attacks, resorting to substance abuse to get my mind off of this, and severe insomnia. The thoughts really caused me so much anxiety and my earlier gay porn taste really did make sense at the time as proof that I was actually gay. At that time I was NUMB to pain, my father was diagnosed with cancer, I was sad of course, but didn’t give much thought into it since I already have so much on my mind and they are not the kind of thoughts you can put “on hold”. After 9 months of severe suffering and losing many friends, I stumbled upon the topic HOCD whilst I was surfing the internet and this was a huge milestone for me.


After discovering and reading so much about HOCD I felt so good and enrolled in an HOCD wellness course; however, due to my pressing anxiety, I rushed through the course and barely benefited anything. I lost taste in life by that time and nothing appealed to me like; for example, I landed an amazing job at an amazing firm. I was happy of course but not the exact level of happiness that is expected from someone landing this amazing first job. I was in a series of constant compulsions; where I would open gay and straight porn and measure my level of arousal to each (it was very extreme). I was testing EVERYTHING, I perceived everything sexually. For example, I would test while eating a banana whether or not I would like giving a blowjob. I was dead on the inside, I was living like a zombie and did nothing all day but compulsions and seeking reassurance with no focus on my work, friends, or family (that needed my care). By the day, the HOCD was being more cunning and sly and attacking me on all fronts.


A few months later, by this time I had lost all gay porn attraction looking at it would not even make my penis tingly, this went away after I kept watching a tremendous ton of straight porn and quitting gay porn, this was my attempt to “turn myself back to being straight again”. By this time, my attraction to girls was slowly coming back I got 2-3 boners around real women and the boners felt so real like I wanted to take that girl and kiss her and then take her to my bed. But it didn’t happen that they came home or hooked up with me. HOCD still managed to lurk back once again, I stopped going to the gym (started gaining weight) because it was such a strong trigger for me. One day, I read on an HOCD forum that no fapping helps, so I gave it a try for a few days when I instantly felt better but of course relapsed once more. By this time, I was still underperforming at my job and procrastinating pretty much everything in my life.


After a failed series of quitting masturbation, due to my belief that it wouldn’t make a difference and reading about the healthy effects of masturbation, I came across YBOP and NoFap website and it came to my attention that I got it all wrong, masturbation was not the problem, the problem was the porn!!!!

I purchase the book YBOP 2 weeks ago and have been reading a lot into the forum; even though, by now my HOCD thoughts had a less effect on me than before, I read through it and understood the concept and the studies behind it and once again it all made sense to me. My first crush was a girl. First porn I looked at was straight for a long time. It just made perfect sense that I desensitized myself and my penis to women. I decided to quit PMO for 90 days and then reflect and see what’s going to happen.


Today, marks my 8th day, the first week was very hard, to fight the urges, given that I get so many boners all the time. Today, once again, I started getting another stream of thoughts (HOCD) whether I was gay or not but I calmed myself down by saying I believe I am not gay this is a porn-induced condition. Your thoughts are not who you are and they do not define you. This HOCD episode was triggered by male fitness models that popped onto my Instagram through the sponsored ads. At first, I was like nice body, I wish I had the same I would probably get so many girls. I then started imagining that this guy probably sleeps with a supermodel everyday, something I wished I could do. The thoughts then escalated to would you want anything sexual with this dude, do you like his photos because you are secretly gay? I was considering masturbating again for reassurance. I calmed these thought by saying to myself a sentence from the book YBOP. “I am not my thoughts, I did not summon them, I do not want them, and I will not act on them.” I then went on to doing a puzzle to get my mind off of things. Since starting no pmo and its only been 8 days, I am performing so much more better at work and so energetic all day.


This is my story, I know its long, but this is the minimum I could write about such an experience. I missed out so many days and months to try to keep it as straight to the point as possible.