Hi all, I am new here and diving right in with sharing my story of internet porn addiction and a road to recovery. I am sharing with the intention of two motivations, firstly is to share what can be seen as a success story, with the intention to motivate others, showing that through hard work and sticking to core values it is possible to get to a good place with no porn in your life. And secondly with the motivation to release the shame I still hold for that period of my life. Though that period of my life is behind me now, I still have not fully let go of the shame it brought about. I know now from my own self development how destructive shame can be, how it fosters in the unspoken shadows and breeds on secrecy. So here I am taking the next step to bring it more out into the open, put a spotlight on those shadows and removing the secrecy. So far I have only shared these details to a select few and the next step that feels comfortable to do so is on a great forum such as this. So let's dig it. I'll start by framing the reference of time by saying that I am 45 years old, and as such the internet (and porn) was just starting to come about as I was becoming a teenager. I probably came across my first pornographic images on the internet when I was in my mid teens. As most teenagers I guess, I found them stimulating and a form of release from the frustrations of teenagerhood. Usage was pretty low during this time and I certainly didn't think much of it. Interest in porn dropped off in my 20's as I started to have relationships and spent time travelling and partying etc. It wasn't till my mid 30's that things started to change. With the advent of streaming media starting to become available and sites such as pornhub becoming the norm for consumption of porn that I started to fall into the world of addiction. And I don't use that word lightly, it really was an addiction by all definitions. This time in my life coincided with attempting to conceive with my partner at the time. As the weeks, months and then years rolled on and we increased our efforts to conceive, I turned to porn as a way of "managing" the situation. Adding quotes here as I was clearly not managing the situation at all. As we escalated efforts to conceive, my addiction escalated as well. I found myself using porn in all the spare time I had. Whenever I was alone, I would be using. Over time I found the subject matter also escalated, having to consume more and more extreme subject matter to find arousal. As this period went on, I also started to retract into myself. Starting to avoid social situations, distancing myself from family, friends and of course my partner. At this point it's worth starting to talk about depression. As the distancing started to set in, so did a state of pretending to the outside world that everything was OK. A large void was starting to build between how I was feeling on the inside, and how I was projecting on the outside, and the worse I felt, the harder it became to talk about it. Over time pretty much everything else lost its appeal and meaning and the only place I could find any "feeling" was while using porn. I knew it was bad and that I needed to stop, however each attempt to stop just saw me fall back in, increasing usage. Eventually the negative feelings inside got so great that I was not able to pretend things were OK on the outside any longer, and in Sept 2019 I had a breakdown. My outside appearance had gotten so thin that it finally crumbled away and the extreme negative feelings that come from depression set in. About a month later, in the most intense mental anguish I have every experienced, I came close to attempting a suicide. I stood on a cliff high over the ocean and very (very) nearly jumped. But I didn't. It was the thought of the others in my life that stopped me. How I couldn't spread this pain out to them, I had gotten myself into this state and it is on me to get myself out, a first step in ownership I guess. So there I was sitting slumped on the cliff feeling utterly empty, but with a feeling that this was the beginning, the turning point, that I couldn't get any lower than this. As I started to think about where to go from here, my first insight was to write 2 lists, things I knew were bad for me and things that were good. And from there on made all efforts to stick to the good things and remove the bad. One of the things on the good list was meditation. Having never meditated before, I just had a feeling that this was going to help with the negative thoughts in my head. Once back home I installed Headspace and found their intro meditation. At just 3 minutes, it seemed manageable enough. I can tell you, it was the most excruciating 3 minutes of my life. Trying to sit for 3 minutes with the thoughts I had suppressed and numbed for years was unbearable. I nearly threw the phone across the room several times. But I made it through and that gave me the strength to go again the next day. Over the next few weeks and months the depressive feeling set in really bad, my feeling of self worth was so low it was so painful to go on, but I kept asking myself who do I want to be. Do I want to be that person from the past with no self control, full of shame and hiding, or do I want to be someone else. One of the biggest things that helped was admitting that I had a problem and asking for help. At that time I was focussed on depression and did not mention the porn as that's all I could bear to expose at the time. I reached out to counsellors and medication in the form of antidepressants. It was hard to accept these (especially the medication) but it was all required to stabilise. In Jan 2020 my partner at the time and I moved to Canada from Sydney. When your leg is on fire, the knee jerk reaction is to jump out of the fire, and Sydney at that time felt like the fire. In hindsight though, this was not a good decision. Changing everything about your life, all your comforts and routine when you are in the depths of depression, I can say now is not recommended. Compounded by the pandemic at that time, made for a very difficult time. Some days (well most days) were unbearable and I came close to relapsing and the thoughts of suicide came many times. One thing the move did help with was the change in habits, it made it easier to draw a line in the sand so to speak. During that year, through all the pain of depression, I found a number of tools that have helped. Meditation became a daily practice (and still is), along with journaling. I joined a men's group and started sharing and discussing deeper concepts with other men. The counselling was a big help and the medication allowed me to focus on these things rather than getting overwhelmed by the pain of the negative emotions. One big thing I found helpful was an 8 week mindfulness based stress reduction course. This gave me a lot of insights and was an intro to the world of mindfulness. Its key principles really resonated with me and its something that continues to guide me today. I was also starting to read and learn about psychology and mental health. In 2021 with what was now becoming a passion for mental health, I embarked on a fundraising campaign for mental health. For each month through 2021 I took on a physical challenge, pushing myself to complete something different each month. From climbing mountains, to paddle board marathons, I managed to fit a lot on. Sharing my exploits and information on mental health through the year, I was able to raise over $6,000 for mental health charities. There have been some casualties though, and during 2021 I separated from my partner of over 16 years. This was an extremely painful and difficult thing to do, and it pains me now still to be writing this. She truly is a great person and we had a lot of great memories together, but ultimately as I was going through a massive transformation in my life, it became clear that we were heading on different paths and we needed to separate. I am eternally grateful to her and have the utmost respect for her. She is not aware of this story and that is a big contributing factor to the shame I hold here. The road to recovering from this shame will be to share this story with her some day. From here I was growing a lot, finding strength in my decisions, and looking for another challenge and deeper connections. That's when I found Dan Doty and his wilderness expeditions. I joined a trip he was leading in Maine US for a week of camping, kayaking and deep inner work. This blew me wide open and I was feeling super strong at the end of 2021. So starting 2022 I made an effort to come off the antidepressants. And this is where the road to recovery took a turn in the wrong direction. While I knew it would be tough to come off them, and though I took the precaution to increment down the dosage, I crashed hard. I fell into another bout of depression and the wounds from the past came crashing back in again. This relapse was quite an eye opener and a realisation that I still had a long way to go. So to be able to stabilise and be able to function enough for work, I went back on them again. As I started to stabilise again, and with a renewed determination to find a way through this, I booked into another retreat. This time it was the come alive program at the haven. This gave me some fantastic tools and perspectives to move forwards with. Not long after that in the middle of 2022, I met my current partner. Having been through divorce and her own journey of self development, we connected on so many levels. We embrace fully open communication and share what we are feeling, work through our triggers together and are fully open about where we are at all the time. It's an incredibly healing, healthy and constructive relationship and I am truly grateful to have found such a wonderful bright soul. And with that base, as well as all the other tools I have picked up over the last few years, I started (very slowly this time) to come off the antidepressants again. Taking at least 3 months between dropping down each dose, feeling the effects of that change, getting comfortable at that level, then stepping down again. And I am pleased to say that as of May 2023 (at the time of writing this), I have completed the last dose. To mark the occasion, I went into the woods, found a clearing under a tree, meditated for a while, wrote a few words on some of the things I still want to let go of, dug a hole and burnt the letting go note and buried the last tablet. It feels so good to say that the period of my life with antidepressants is now behind me. At this point it's worth mentioning a note about antidepressants. For some they are a very valid source of stabilisation and a worthy tool in the toolbox for those that need them. I do not hold judgement for anyone that uses them, and if anything through my journey, I now have the utmost respect for those that struggle with mental health and need medication to stabilise. For me though I have always known it was a temporary thing. I have many things in my toolbox now, from meditation to breathwork (a recent discovery that is working really well), exercise to crying (such a healthy way to release heavy emotions), that I have decided to not be dependent on external substances. It's hard work for sure, and this last drop to get off them completely is bringing its own challenges, but it's worth it to stick to my values. And as a final note to finish this story, my partner is now pregnant. We couldn't be more excited and really looking forward to bringing a little one into the world, in particular into a world of conscious communication and emotional regulation. It's going to be a wild ride but I am very much ready for this next stage in my life and walk into it with my heart wide open. Resources Here are some of the resources that I have mentioned in this story, along with a couple others that I have found useful. I have tons of others as well so please do reach out if you are interested in any other book, retreats, courses etc. Meditation https://www.headspace.com/ https://insighttimer.com/ Breathwork Reading https://theresilienceproject.com.au/ Journalling https://theresilienceproject.com.au/shop/product/6-month-wellbeing-journal/ Mindfulness based stress reduction http://www.mindfulnessinstitute.ca/mbsr Mens group’s https://www.meetup.com/mortal-mens-community/ https://arkabrotherhood.com/ Wilderness retreat https://dandoty.com/ Wellness retreat https://haven.ca/come-alive/
