My Story

I'm 22 years old, and I've been heavily addicted to porn since I hit puberty, around age 12, so that's ten years, or about half of my life.

I think it really all started with a lack of sexual education. My body started going through the changes that everyone experiences, but nobody, and I mean - not one person, ever talked to me at all about sex, so I found my own avenue to release my sexual energy, and that avenue was porn. It didn't start with hard-core porn though. Before I ever hit puberty I saw sex scenes in R rated movies, so when I started developing hormones and and the urges that came with them I just put two and two together. I didn't have access to a computer though, and the TV was in the family room, so being an artist I would actually draw explicit pinups from memory and use those as material. I know it sounds silly but I wasted a lot of time making those drawings and then using them as porn material, getting upset, throwing them away, and then making more drawings. It was a frustrating cycle of self loathing and addiction that would later manifest into something more severe when I would binge watch porn and pay for live cam site porn.

When I was 12 my family got a computer, with internet and a printer, and I transitioned from drawing my own porn to printing off soft-core nudes, like Playboy. This continued for about a year. Then one day I saw an ad of a very hard-core animated GIF that depicted a woman riding a man. At first I shut down the browser and left the computer, overwhelmed by what I saw (despite being addicted to soft-core porn for a few years, this was a whole other level). Curiosity killed the cat though, and I came back. Not long after that I got a PSP handheld gaming system (and later an iPod Touch) and transitioned to downloading videos on my mobile devices. That initial animated GIF I saw is still burned in my memory, it always will be, as well as all the porn I've seen over the past 10 years.

So that's how my addiction started, and here's why I want to quit: I'm tired of the way that porn changes my brain, I can actually feel the chemical difference and I don't like it. Porn also has a domino effect on every other aspect of my life, including sleeping patterns (I slept an average of 3 hours a night during high school between porn addiction and video game addiction) and subsequently exercise as well. I'm tired of releasing all my sexual energies towards something that I don't get anything out of. I'm tired of having a low self esteem and a brain that's been socially re-wired. As a kid I was very social and extroverted but ever since porn addiction I've had serious problems with social anxiety and depression.

Here's what I consider to be the worst part of my addiction. Growing up, I moved a lot (I went through four high schools) and everywhere I went it seemed like the most attractive girls I met seemed to like me, I've been told I'm handsome and have desirable personality qualities - but porn really messed me up, and I never dated anyone, porn was my only sexual outlet. Now I know it sounds egotistical to go off and claim that every one of the sexiest dames I ever met had the hots for me, and that's not exactly what I'm saying. What I am saying is that despite being socially incapacitated, I still realized the opportunities that I was passing by. I honestly remember quite a few times where other kids blatantly told me that "so and so" was flirting with me really hard, and that she liked me a lot (as if they were explaining to a blind man that he had just shaken hands with Batman). Even still, it didn't matter, I didn't love myself, so I was incapable of love, let alone maintaining a healthy relationship. As I walked down the halls in school I would literally imagine a glass wall around myself, with me screaming on the inside, but no one could hear my cries for help.

It affected my grades too, and despite being ambitious and intelligent I never applied my potential to anything social or academic. A couple of times I actually had teachers call in psychologists to come and ask me what was wrong. They wanted to know why a young man that seemed perfectly healthy and intelligent struggled so badly with grades and making friends (I never had one close friend). I always knew what the source of my problems was, but could never admit that I struggled with porn addiction, admitting to drug addition would have been a thousand times easier. One woman who was a school counselor even quit her job shortly after talking to me, and my gut has always told me that her interaction with me and her inability to get a single peep out of me played a heavy part in why she felt helpless about her ability to help the students at the school she worked at. Looking back on all of this is hard. It's especially difficult realizing that I gave up the potential of having real relationships with girls that I liked (who were actually more attractive than the women I was lusting after in my voyeuristic fantasies) all for porn and masturbation ... something that's not even a shadow of what real relationships and sex are actually like. Even to this day I have almost no history of relationships. I've had a serious relationship and sex with one woman, but I wasn't physically attracted to her, and it was a toxic relationship: she emotionally abused me and cheated on me right in front of me. To be honest I think I mostly dated her because I was depressed and needed someone to talk to, which wasn't right but still not justification for the fact that many of my worst memories come from what happened during the time that we dated for 2 years.

All that having been said, I still feel there's hope. I've actually had highs and lows in my addiction, it hasn't been a plateau so much as a roller coaster ride. There have been times where I've binged on porn, and there's actually been a periods of a few months where I didn't masturbate or look at porn at all without any help, just through raw self motivation. That's not enough though. I need support. If I'm to win the war, and not just a few battles here and there, I need other people who are going through the same struggle as me. Only people who have been severely addicted to porn from a young age to the point that it ruins their life understand what I've gone through, and you're the only ones who can help me. If you bothered to read through everything I've written, I really need you now, I can't make it through this without you.

 

Thanks so much, I'm really hoping that my life can enter a new chapter.