I was reading YourBrainOnPorn, "Can You Trust Your Johnson?" and then this sentence here made my day: "For a boy aged 10-14, with no previous sexual experience, there is no reset button." Full context: Spoiler Three years ago I was part of a team of TV researchers who looked into many of the issues surrounding internet porn for a program that never aired. The main producer felt the scientific evidence involved (which was supposed to be the back bone of the program) was not strong enough. During the research I spoke with a number of people with porn related problems, literally read thousands of comments from men on anti-porn sites and spoke with neuroscientists. Much of the scientific research is still in its infancy but there is no doubt in my mind that prolonged viewing of porn can have a seriously negative effect on some adults and children. The most concerning thing I came across was adult & teenage males who began watching standard porn (if there is such thing) regularly and over the course of several years started to move to more and more extreme imagery as they became desensitized to the standard porn and looked for the newest 'fix.' People who on the surface seemed perfectly normal human beings were worried that they could only get an erection to porn, no longer felt the urge to form a proper relationship with a woman as porn had become a substitute, heterosexual men who had become so desensitised to heterosexual porn they found themselves viewing homosexual porn, men who were concerned about their feelings for children because the line between what they found pretty or cute and what they found sexy was beginning to blur. 99% of these people were adults and had had time to form a proper sexuality and relationships prior to their issues. This meant, that as one neuroscientist suggested, with the right help their brains could be returned to their previous sexual identity, even if the images they had viewed cannot be completely forgotten. For a boy aged 10-14, with no previous sexual experience, there is no reset button. We could have future generations of young men who objectify women and have totally unrealistic ideas of sex and in some cases men who will have their brains re-wired by extreme imagery to the extent that they could be a risk to the women and children around them. We shouldn't put our heads in the sand and await for some true scientific evidence. We need to do something now. I'm 16 years old... but started with porn at 8. What if there's no reboot for me? Holy shit guys I'm lost. I didn't get to the point of watching transgendered person or whatever but still... holy shit. I made another topic with more detail: http://www.NoFap.com/forum/index.ph...-to-be-addicted-but-problems-with-hocd.60826/ Some months ago, I started to find pictures of naked men arousing. And I was starting to get used to straight porn.
Spoiler Yes, but... if you're 31 and started with 6, then you probably started with magazines and stuff, while I started with high speed porn. I always had crushes and looked at girls, but now that I think about it, before porn I didn't even know what sexuality meant. Maybe I just think I'm straight because I just went with what the porn taught me. Sure I will try the reboot, but reading that really made me cringe. Now, you mentioned that this article have not enough evidence, with that I must agree. My rational brain agrees that this makes sense, but I'm sure my HOCD-brain won't let that go so easily.
Don't let that get you down, bud. I started when I was 8 years old. Yes, it was a journey, but YOU CAN successfully reboot. Don't let statements like that affect you self confidence.
Thanks guys. I hope this is going to work, and the results will be what I'm expecting them to be. No matter how much time it takes, I just want to be straight as I always thought I was and have a normal sex life. I don't know what I'll do if after the reboot I still get erections to pictures of guys and lose interest in women, seriously. I don't think this is likely to happen, but maybe you know how OCD works.
YBOP says for young people it may take 2 years to completely heal to pre-porn levels. But 2 years is not forever.
I know you are just nervous because this is a scary thing. I really don't know how many times I have written about HOCD, way too many to count. I don't have it but being on this website for long enough HOCD is extremely common. You need to understand how porn addiction works, it works on what is the most shocking and soon that will be what arouses you. I read your other thread and you say you aren't as addicted but i think you are. I watched porn for probably 16 years and watched some transgendered person porn just never got into gay porn. I didn't have HOCD, I think it effects everyone differently. The only way to get back to normal is a reboot.
There never really was a "reset button." I wish there were, and like many here, in the middle of the addiction, given the option of completely losing any sexual feeling, of losing all of my sexuality, to simply turn off the addiction, I would have chosen to turn off the addiction if that meant I would never have had a sexual feeling of any kind, forever. Mentally, I would have chosen to feel nothing at all if that was what I had to do to quit the feeling the addiction made me feel. But, it does not work that way, no easy way out, I am afraid. When YBOP talks this way it refers to brain reward pathways. There are two types of guys in here, the guys who grew up and had actual, sexual, experiences before the invention of High Speed Internet Porn, and the guys, like you, who have no sexual experience before High Speed Internet Porn. First group of guys are a dying breed. Before long, every male in America will be exposed to High Speed Internet Porn as, sort of, their first sexual experience. It is easier for the first group of guys, older guys, who had sex, before becoming addicted, to rewire. Why? They are re-wiring to something that, at least for a while in their lives, existed for some time prior: actual sex. There is a pathway, so to speak, in those guys brains, they can try to return to. Younger guys, who first wired to HSIP, have it more difficult. They are not going back to anything. They are not rewiring to actual sex, as a reward mechanism, because they never had actual sex, in the first place. For them, they must first reboot. Really, every addict must first reboot. But, for the younger guys, the wiring process will be totally new, whereas for the older, their brains at least recognize sex can be rewarding. Don't freak out, just understand what Gary Wilson is saying. Quitting porn, for an addict, was never going to be anything but incredibly painful and difficult. And now, for some depressing news... OK, you can do it. I did it, I am no superman, you can do it, many others have done it. You can do it.
