A Reflection on a Stubborn Porn Addiction

This post is rather long and perhaps self indulgent. I understand if you don't want to read it. Mostly, I wanted to write about my journey with porn addiction to put things in perspective for my own sake.

I've known porn is a problem for me since I was 17. I'm 28 now. I grew up in with parents that were emotionally manipulative and sometimes physically abusive. I had very low self-esteem in my high school years. I didn't fit in with my peers. I wasn't challenged in school. My father would put me down and called me names like "son of bitch." My mother was often hysterical regularly crying and throwing fits. She would sometimes break things in her anger.

I turned to porn as a means of escape. It started when I would sneak out of my room late at night to watch soft core porn on cable tv from the ages of 12-14. Then when I got a computer I would regularly (3-4 times a week) stay up all night watching porn. I got in trouble for falling asleep at school. I remember being in class and all I could think about was how great it was going to be to watch porn that nigh.

At 18 I moved out of the house and went to college on a scholarship that was extended to me only on the basis of my SAT score. I was a poor student, but did well on tests. On the SAT is was in the top 1-3% of test takers. My high school GPA, however, was only 3.0 on a 5.0 scale.

Freshman year of college I turned my life around by studying in earnest for the first time, exercising, completing my homework, and abstaining from pornography. I met my first girlfriend about a month into my freshman year. She was one of the most attractive girls at my then small engineering college, but she self harmed and was addicted to bulimia.

Things were dramatic for the next 3 years, but ultimately positive. I continued to make good grades at or near the top of my class as a physics major, and I was in many ways a leader at my university.

I tried to help my girlfriend through her problems and she treated me as well as she could given her own problems. I began to use pornography again to deal with the stress of our relationship. This lead to some sexual disfunction. She knew I had a problem with porn and it hurt her to know that sometimes I would masturbate to porn rather be with her especially when I was stressed.

When we broke up I was despondent and left college for a year. Upon my return, I didn't have the same drive as before and finished my senior year with several Ds and Cs lowering my GPA to from 3.95 to 3.6.

I've had some success in life after graduation, but porn and masturbation have always held me back. I just don't have any motivation to learn, work, exercise, or take risks after I use porn. I binge by staying up late and then not doing anything the day after.

After working for a few years I started a company with a close friend from college. Things didn't work out. Now, I plan on going back to being an employee at least for a couple years before starting another company or going back to school. I've been dragging my feet on getting a new job.

I feel completely unmotivated to find work. I can't think of anything I would find fulfilling. I've been living with my mom for the last 3 months ever since I decided to stop working on my business. My porn use has been pretty high recently though it never really when away for the last 10 years.

I feel so much more motivated, productive, and alive when I'm not using porn. In someways I've excelled everywhere I worked and studied. I usually get praised/noticed for my intelligence and creativity at problem solving. However, I've never been able to constantly put in the hard work to become really great at something. The problem is I so often feel completely depleted after heavy porn use. My porn addiction has held me back for almost all of my adult life. I want to beat it, but I don't know how.

 

Thanks @DoubleBurgerWithCheese . I've experienced PIED and DE at times in certain periods of my life. When you can't perform basic biological functions you know something has gone really wrong. It's even caused me to pass up relationships with girls because I knew my "plumbing" wasn't going to work.

I also appreciate the bible verse. I'm not a believer, however the older I've gotten the more wisdom I see in some religions and especially Christianity. I've joined a bible study group for young men recently. I really enjoy the lessons I'm learning and meeting the other guys in the group.

I have to be honest and say I don't have faith, but I do consider myself a cultural christian. I hope that someday I can can come to a true spirituality/faith. At this point I consider myself religious but not spiritual. One thing I do know is that science does not have answers to life's most important questions. Even when I considered myself a strident atheist I was seriously annoyed by the rampant scientism that's prevalent in our society.