“HOCD is in the past, but porn is still a problem”

Here’s what one young man shared:

When I first arrived here, I was terrified because of an addiction to what I *thought* was just a particular type of porn/fetish (HOCD). Now, having “un-wired” this fetish, I’ve come to realize the core damage that regular porn did to me is still very much intact. It’s still got its pull. I use “regular” lightly here, as really to an addict regular porn isn’t regular at all.My attraction for women returned to the level it used to be. This was a fantastic and amazing feeling. I was on top of the world! Until I realized I was still addicted to porn—just not the type I used to believe I was addicted to.

You can un-wire every porn induced, whacked out fetish you acquire and you’ll still be stuck with the main problem that you have to deal with eventually: porn itself.

It’s funny, but my mind is so much clearer. I remember so much now, like when I first started with all this and how even then, I was masturbating A LOT. There’s the joke that teenage boys masturbate all the time, but looking back, I actually WAS. I wanted pornography even from a very young age (12-13) and would constantly seek it out.

But I didn’t get the porn, masturbate, and then go out and socialize like other kids. I would masturbate to it as much as I physically could, until I was so exhausted I just fell asleep.

It intensified considerably as the Internet came around and you can guess what happened from there. I can’t believe I didn’t realize I had a problem back then; it seems so obvious to me now. But as they say, ignorance is bliss. I think the fact that I was still in puberty played a role in the addiction, considering I was still growing/mentally developing. Whatever, hardcore porn was the last thing my mind needed.

Here’s a guy who experienced big benefits from cutting way back on masturbation, too:

It use to be that I had to fight the urges to masturbate or have insane chasers after. Now I think my brain is adapting to being without masturbation. I can go for days without masturbating once. I still sometimes masturbate, but usually it’s something that triggers it…for example an advertisement or a picture that slipped through my internet filter. I find the internet filter to be extremely useful because it minimizes the times that this kind of thing happens.

I found that, after stopping masturbation, the OCD quieted down quite a lot. I found that right after an orgasm is when the OCD is worst. It’s like my mind is racing and everything is just crushing me. I just feel engulfed.

I have seen some quite amazing results of rewiring…I hardly find the disturbing old porn arousing. It’s still arousing in that it causes anxiety, but it wasn’t like before where I was addicted to it and the dopamine crave was screaming in my head, screaming for the next dose. When I think about it, it’s hardly arousing at all.

Sometimes, when I think back at everything that has happened in the last few months, it just seems so surreal…I don’t know how to describe it. I still can’t believe that I had to deal with this problem, because I would never in my life have thought that porn would have become such a big problem for me. I am glad I didn’t continue down the road of pornography, because I don’t know where I would be right now…I very well could be dead. It give me chills to think about the time I’ve had.