You’ve all probably heard a million of these stories, but I thought I would share as I think I may have had some interesting experiences that might be informative or relatable to others. Also, there’s no one in real life I would open up to about all this so I might as well lay it all out here.
Addiction
About 3 years ago I finally awoke to the possibility that porn was addictive and that I, in fact, was addicted to it. It took a while. I’m in my early 30s now so when I first discovered porn in my teens, it was back when you had to painstakingly download one video at a time, overnight, on a 56k modem. Nevertheless, I got hooked pretty fast. I lived in a rural backwater town and this world of tanned, big-titted, dirty-talking girls fucking in mansions in LA on my computer screen was just 100% irresistible. I was a daily consumer of porn throughout my late teens, but thankfully being forced to share a room throughout the first few years of university repressed the habit to where it was controllable and I stumbled my way through my early 20s.
It was when I moved to a new school to do my MA that my descent into addiction accelerated significantly. I had my own room, and the increased workload kept me confined to that room a large proportion of the time. I also started smoking weed more frequently to relax and relieve stress. I soon discovered that being high intensifies the pleasurable effects of porn ten times over. The higher the better. I became an expert at edging whilst getting high, starting with something tame like a sexy music video and slowly escalating to hardcore porn over the course of 4 to 5 hours. The dopamine rush was like nothing else I had ever experienced. I didn’t want to do anything else. When the effects started lessening I would just get even higher and watch ever more extreme porn. When all else failed I would take a break for a few days, but only because I so desperately needed to get that feeling back. It never even crossed my mind that this was damaging behaviour.
This continued throughout my mid-twenties. After graduation I moved to a new country to start a new job and the extra stimulation of a new culture, new people and challenging work managed to stave off any serious negative effects of my addiction for a year or so. I got promoted, socialized, slept with quite a few girls and even found a serious girlfriend. But I kept getting high and watching porn and slowly things began to worsen. I didn’t know why but I began to lose interest in going out, my friends and my job. It was like the world was turning grey. I still, STILL, didn’t get the connection. I though I just needed another change. “I get bored easily” I would tell people. So I moved again, to another city in another country.
In this new country I didn’t know anyone except my girlfriend. It took me a while to find a weed dealer but as soon as I did I lapsed right back into the same pattern. I would try and make excuses not to see my girlfriend so I could get high and watch porn. I would encourage her to go out with her friends so I could be home alone. I would tell her I was feeling sick and she shouldn’t come over. We fought more and more over tiny, stupid things. She felt like an irritation, just an obstacle that was preventing me from watching porn. Eventually I broke up with her and soon after that, my addiction reached a new level. Every single night I would get high to the point of almost passing out, before getting into bed with my laptop and masturbating to porn for as long as I could. I literally masturbated until my dick was swollen and red raw.
When I think back, this is when I really began to notice significant psychological effects, although I didn’t know what the cause was at the time. My motivation dropped to absolute zero. I had wild mood swings. At night, in particular, I would experience extreme depression. I just couldn’t see the point of anything. I would get really sad and cry sometimes and I just didn’t know why. Everything seemed so bleak.
Recovery
Incredibly, I still couldn’t see the connection to my porn habit. I thought it was nicotine. I gave it up. Nothing changed. I stopped partying and doing drugs (except weed). Nothing changed. Finally, I saw some Ted talk about porn addiction. I started reading about NoFap and PornFree. I was sceptical but I thought I might as well try. I gave up porn and I gave up weed. I didn’t really smoke unless I was watching porn anyway.
The first few days were terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure. The first few days I felt incredible. My sex drive was all-consuming. I thought about fucking every second of the day. My mind had no porn to feed its cravings so it turned its attention to real girls. I would mentally undress every girl I saw and re-enact a porn scene in my head. I got rock hard erections whilst sitting at my desk doing data analysis. I was a walking fuck machine.
After 3-4 days, I crashed. Hard. I started getting severe anxiety at work. I had panic attacks. I would sweat profusely. I would get dizzy and faint, even while sitting down. I would get crippling headaches on a regular basis. I felt this constant sense of impending doom. My sex drive disappeared completely. I could scarcely believe this was porn withdrawal. I thought I was dying.
This lasted for months. I began to understand what porn had done to me. I read more and more about brain neurochemistry and it slowly dawned on me how much damage I had done. I felt awful but I was now determined to stick it out.
During this time, there was one particular incident that I remember very vividly that is worth describing. I was in the relatively early stages on recovery, feeling pretty miserable but functional. I was in a coffee shop working on a coding problem that I hadn’t been able to figure out for weeks. Without going into too much detail, solving this problem was potentially worth a lot of money to me. Suddenly, in a eureka moment, I figured it out. I felt this surge of elation. But then, immediately, there was some kind of misfire in my brain. I was instantly overwhelmed with anxiety and this intense panicking sensation. I started sweating, my heart was pounding. I packed up my shit, ran home and curled up on my bed for the rest of the day. It was like my brain just couldn’t handle positive feelings anymore. Like it was allergic to dopamine. Later on in my recovery I had a similar experience after a heavy workout. I don’t know what exactly happened in neurochemical terms but for me at least, it was conclusive proof of just how much I had messed up my brain’s natural reward system. Porn is so, so powerful.
Today, I have been porn free for almost 2 years. I have had two relapses and the recovery is always an ordeal. But thankfully it never gets as bad as it was the first time. I also find I can masturbate with no porn or other stimulation besides mental images and it has no real negative effects. Which makes me think the objective of no masturbation at all (i.e. NoFap) is somewhat misguided. In my opinion, the problem is not specifically about masturbating, it’s about the reward overload that comes with hyper-stimulation (among other things). I now think of those feel-good brain chemicals kinda like money. Steady income from a variety of different sources is a recipe for a financially healthy life. But taking out a huge loan that you can’t afford in order to obtain something that brings brief but extreme happiness is never worth it. You pay that loan back with interest and it can cripple you. You need to manage those chemicals in the same way. A life without addiction is one in which you derive your happiness from many different sources. Your brain no longer has this unrivaled source of fake but powerful happiness so it begins to look for it in other places. It finds it in people, in hobbies, in learning, in relationships, in actual, real, person-centric sex. A life without addiction is a life that is textured and full of colour. I ain’t ever going back.
TL; DR – I don’t watch porn anymore
LINK – Another (very long) but possibly interesting story of addiction and recovery
by megalomajor
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