I’m 28 and am addicted to porn. Started in my early teens, although 56k modems and living with my parents curbed things. I definitely knew I had an addictive personality though, as I’d often masturbate to digital pictures and magazines 5-6 times a day in my early teens. So I took precautions when I moved out. I’m thankfully intrinsically cheap, so never went to prostitutes/strip clubs. I did go out of my way to never have a computer at home. Just never bought one. Went through college fine, M’d once or twice a day to mental thoughts only. Fine is relative, as I did have bad urges every few months and would pathetically creep on the roommate’s computer when he wasn’t home and go online. But overall exposure to the internet was pretty limited or else monitored, so the addiction didn’t reach it’s full “potential.”
Then I went to med school, met my first girlfriend at 22 and lost my virginity to her. First year of med school was so busy there was never any time to fool around with too much PMO. Second year of med school and everything thereafter was much less time consuming. I’d sneak into the computer lab, get a private room , loose hours at a time and walk out totally deflated, physically and mentally. I would often need to write reports or take notes, so I bought 15 year old ultra-oldschool laptap that ran on a 33mhz processor. The draw was that it simply could not connect to the internet. Around this time, I’d get ED once in a blue moon with my current girlfriend and think it was lack of sleep or stress or something else. But things were typically OK, I’d usually have sex 4-5x a day.
(god, only when I’m writing this down does it all appear to be such a linear or even exponential progression in my addiction.)
School housing ends after 2 years so I had to move into my own place off campus. I need a real computer to do work and reply to blasted emails… You can guess what happened. Wayyyy more PMO, way more frequent PIED. i started to become interested at harder and harder stuff. i was shocked seeing how turned on i was getting at such aggressive and frankly degrading stuff. I knew it was bad and that I was wearing really deep neural grooves in my brain. I tried to stop, a week here and there, but nothing sustained. I put filters on everything but I’d still find a way out, clicking forgot password or friggin reformatting the computer. I even tore out the wireless card in a new laptop once, only to get a usb wifi adapter later. it was BAD. I seriously felt like two people. One pathetic and the other more pathetic.
Because of money issues in my family, my folks moved in with me 2 years back. I thought: great, this will help. I put the computer in the living room. Expected the awkwardness of everything to cure me.
Wrong. I just snuck down there at night. PMO’s into the wee early hours, then took caffeine pills to stay awake during the day. PIED with girlfriend gets worse, i get more stressed and insecure and seek out even more PMO. All this time I’m working as a psychiatrist and hear about people struggle with addictions to meth and alcohol everyday, all the while feeling idiotic and weak with my comparatively minor addiction that I still haven’t been able to shake after 10 years.
Part of the residency program I’m in makes me work in a methadone program for a month. I started a few weeks ago. I initially didn’t want to because I felt like it was just enabling their addiction in a different form. I still often feel like that, but in seeing so many 50, 60, 70 year old men who were just now rebuilding their lives after wasting decades with heroine, the sadness inherent in that helped me get over a specific mental threshold with my porn addiction.
I had tried to quit before but always felt temped and weak during times of abstinence. But not anymore. I’m just so sick of all the wasted time jerking off before a little glowing screen. I’m sick of laying next to my girlfriend in bed after going soft. I’m tired of relinquishing my brain and continually replaying some filthy scene in my head wherever I’m at, whoever I’m with.
This post might mention the clinic i work at, but it’s really YBR and YBOP and reading all of your posts that gave me the extra motivation umph to quit and feel strong doing so. Thank you to everyone who’s ever posted on here. I really appreciate your time and openness and hope I can be as helpful to my patients as you all have been to me.
LINK – new motivation to reboot while working at a methadone clinic
June 18, 2013
after 10 yrs glued to the computer, I kicked the addiction and fixed the PIED!!
July 06, 2013
hey you guys/girls/men/women,
just wanted write about my success story because it’s largely the result of motivation gleaned from this site. my story is here: http://www.yourbrainrebalanced.com/index.php?topic=10524.0
but in a nutshell, same story as most of you all here, looked at too much porn, started to get into harder and harder stuff, started to affect relationships, etc x 10 yrs. was so fed up with the wasted time and energy and the embarrassment of having ED at 28!
so I quit looking at porn for 2 months, still had problems with PIED, then found this site and realized I had to get serious and quite PMO altogether. I did so for the last 2 months even though i only put up the counter about a month ago.
Didn’t have sex during the last month but my girlfriend (long distance) visited last week and we’ve been having sex about twice to three times a day for the last week without any problems, at 90 to 100% hardness. i feel awesome; like I’m a teenager again. it’s a huge change from what it was, which was either ED, going soft quickly after penetration, or being at like 70% hardness the whole time and having to have sex really rough and frantically to maintain the erection. sex now lasts wayy longer. no tricks or pills or anything, just no PMO. i must sound like a cult member or salesman.
barely had any cravings during the no PMO time. Had lots of cravings during the first 2 months of no porn though. now i have no more cravings. porn is so negatively associated with humiliation and life regression and social awkwardness that i honestly find it unappealing.
flatlined for a good month during the first no PMO month. that was kind of worrisome, but it went away after that time.
I kept myself a little more busy than usual during all this time. scheduled more time with friends, worked out more, ate better, read more. during the first few weeks, i read a lot of stories on this site for motivation and i took notes!
anyways, I’m stoked. for petty man reasons, I’m happy that the wanger works again. secondly, I’m happy to have kicked this addiction. it was taking over my mind. i was seriously thinking and visualizing porn scenes for days after watching them. it was pretty toxic.
this has changed my life. more time in the day, more confidence, more energy, more motivation. who knew jerking off for 20-30min a day could have so many wide-ranging effects?? anyways, ism crazy grateful to this site an to everyone who has posted.
feel free to PM if you have any questions or wanna talk. -minh
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