Better late than never...

Well I've finally done something constructive and honest about my porn problem- coming here. It has taken me the longest time to get to this point. Pride and shame have kept me from reaching out to anyone at all until now, and I'm 44 years old!!

I only very recently accepted to myself that I have a genuine addiction, like a smoker or a drug addict. Before that I didn't take the notion of porn addiction seriously, even tho any honest evaluation of my life would readily have shown that I had a problem. Strangely, as soon as I accepted the idea, I was able to stop looking at porn, first for a week, then for two. Each time I relapsed into a binge tho. I think the reason that accepting the idea that I had a real addiction helped me was because I was a smoker once upon a time, and I stopped. I could see that the process of quitting porn was quite similar to quitting cigarettes(first three days the hardest, avoid triggers, stay active etc) and that recognition helped a lot.

However, my experiences of relapsing have made me realise that porn, at least for me, is tougher to quit than cigarettes. I stopped smoking for many months before having one minor relapse and then quit for good, porn I can't even make it to 15 days!

I have accepted that I can't do this alone, altho that is my instinctive urge. That urge to not admit the problem is what destroyed my last relationship of ten years. My partner knew I had a problem but I would never admit it, never be honest, the shame and pride were too strong. If I am ever lucky enough to meet another good woman, I swear I will work on that weakness in myself harder than anything else.

I don't know if there are many older guys like me here, but FWIW here's a quick run down of my involvement with pornography. Probably pretty standard for an old fart like me. I first saw porn mags under my Dad's bed when I was a boy of maybe 8. I found them titillating and would check them out any time I could get away with it. I guess I also learnt that they were something secret, to be hidden. I found a book of erotic stories at 13 and got off to them, so my first orgasm was thru porn, which I find sad to think about now. From then on I would always seek it out, as did my friends. We swapped magazines, and later videos. I didn't see my first porn video til I was about 16, and I really liked it. Let's say it made quite the impression. I would seek them out after that.

As an aside, I thank the stars that the internet was not around then. Non-internet porn, while addictive, has many limitations on it that make it less fiercely so. Access was difficult and embarrassing, especially as a teenager, fronting up to a shopkeeper or video store owner was excruciating! It also got old pretty quick, you would get bored of a mag or movie and there wasn't another you could just click on. Then you would have to use your imagination, or your horniness would motivate you to try your luck with girls. So all in all, while I liked porn a lot and probably prioritised it more than was ideal, I had a pretty normal teenage life and had plenty of sex. This was true of my twenties as well.

It was the arrival of the darn interwebs, and in particular broadband, that did for me. I would put it as being like the difference between coca leaves and crack cocaine, or a low-al beer and tequila shots. It is that profoundly different in it's addictiveness.

Once I discovered online porn, I was in big trouble. It really got its hooks in to me. And in the last few years I can see that it absolutely ruined me. Depression, self-loathing, loss of energy, retreat from friends and family, negative work impacts, unhealthy eating and weight gain, you name it, porn sent me down a deep nasty death spiral. I just hope I can get back out. The re-wiring required after all this time must be pretty extreme. I hope that with help from the good people here I can get my life and my soul back.