16 Years of Addiction - Winning the Battle

34/M/WI

I am an Internet Pornography Addict. I'm going through the recovery process and am seeking tools nessasary for my survival. NoFap is one of my tools.

I was first introduced to porn at the age of 8 after stumbling across my stepfather's stash. I felt excited and equally nervous and afraid of what I was seeing. But that was for only a little while. I would ransack his collection for my personal use. We had cable, so my encounters with HBO, Cinemax and Showtime were carefully planned for maximum visual entertainment. Skinamax first, then cartoons. In my tween and teenage years, I would stay up late and get my Skinamax fix. I would occasionally view porn at school (IT didn't block anything at the time).

Of course, there was other things happening in my life durning that period. Like sexual abuse from a family member. Lots of psychedelic drug use. Lots of drinking. Questioning my sexuality because I was so freaking awkward around girls. Issues with depression. Living in poverty. Thoughts of suicide. Suicide attempt that landed me in a psychiatric hospital. All before the age of 18.

By the time I turned 18, I turned my life around. I was living on my own, had a job, had a car, stopped drinking and psychedelic drug use. I also did all the thingsu an 18 year old can do - namely buy lotto, cigarettes and porn. No longer did I have steal porn or have cable. Anytime I wanted it I could have it. And no one could say shit about it.

I felt like I was doing alright. But my use of porn changed dramatically when I purchased a Sega Dreamcast.

WTF? A Dreamcast?

I was doing alright by an 18 year old standards in 1999. But I didn't own a computer. I owned a Dreamcast. And it had a 56k modem. And I had an ISP. And I had instant access to porn. And when I bought a keyboard for the Dreamcast, I thought I had it made.

Fast forward 5 years. I met my wife in college.

She knew I was into porn but didn't realize how far my addiction went.

We accidentally got pregnant and my porn use skyrocketed. I would spend hours away from her so I could look at porn. After she gave birth and we had a child to take care of at home, I would still spend hours with porn rather than with her and the baby. I even found a Netflix type service for the type of porn I was into (for those who don't remember, Netflix was a DVD subscription delivery service before it streamed movies). I was paying for this service even though we were flat broke and didn't know where rent and diaper money was going to come from.

She found out and lost her mind.
Her freak out and subsequent breakdown inspired my first attempt to quit porn.
I didn't want to lose her.
She asked me to delete all porn I had on my computer, throw away all my print and DVD porn and cancel the subscription.
I did just that. I deleted files from my HDs. She threw away my collection so I could go chasing it down later.

Since that first discovery, there have been many more. The last one involved my use of tumblr to maintain multiple porn blogs dedicated to favorite types and actresses with the ability for people to submit pornographic content to me.

She found out and lost her mind. But unlike past freak outs, she had had it. Treatment or divorce.

I didn't want to lose her. She is the love of my life. I tried many times in the past to quit but have failed. This will be my last attempt to quit because I don't ever intend on going back to porn. As of today, I am 50 days clean, 90 days in treatment, 5 days no fapping. I've only fapped 6 times since starting treatment.

How will NoFap help in my recovery -
I need a sexual reset. All my life I've been involved with porn. I need to clear my sex drive of the porn influence. I currently don't have physical issues with sex with my wife. I have many issues with the intimacy, being present durning intercourse, and other non physical aspects of sex with my wife. I have had stress and porn induced ED episodes in the past, with each episode not lasting more than a month.

I also plan to use NoFap as my journal during treatment. I hope that my struggles and success will help those who need it.

 

My first goal is 60 days no PMO, hard mode. 5 days in!