“The porn made me feel so disconnected and ashamed that I didn’t want to be around anyone, but instead dwell in the garbage that I just watched. Porn made me feel less human, but I kept coming back to it, it was my drug that gave me false pleasure. I would watch porn for about five minutes, and then feel like dirt for the rest of the day and sometimes the week. This pattern continued up to 2011 when I decided to start cleaning myself up from porn because my depression got to the point of suicidal thoughts and tendencies. I went a solid six months without watching porn, and I noticed how my depression was absent as well. I felt happier, life seemed very enjoyable, and I felt connected to the people around me, while before, porn had caused me to feel dehumanized by society. Even to this day, I have not viewed a single porn image or video. Since October 24, 2013, my depression has not shown up once in my life. I’ve surrounded myself with people who remind me that I don’t need porn to find happiness or pleasure.”
Porn & Mental Health
“Because of my past drug addiction that I felt I had beat, indulging in porn didn’t seem like a problem. After all, it was a ‘natural’ part of life, plus I wasn’t using drugs (or so I thought) anymore. What I came to find out the hard way is that porn became a very real addiction with very real effects in my life. And some of these effects were almost identical to hard drugs. I wasn’t sticking needles in my arm, but I got to the point I couldn’t even look at an attractive woman as a human being, but only saw her as an object to pursue or a trigger to act out on. Almost everyone knows that sticking a needle in your arm isn’t good for you. But do they know that porn can be just as addictive and ruin relationships with the people they love? Knowing personally that pornography addiction was so much harder to kick than my drug addiction, my advice to anyone that wants a real satisfying life and relationship is to avoid porn at all costs. If you find you’re already stuck in it, get out and get help immediately. It will never satisfy you and it only gets worse. As for me, being free from this, and everything else, has made my life, family, and marriage better than it has ever been. The struggle to free myself from this addiction has been much more worth it than I would have imagined.”
The Porn Drug and Your Relationship
“I turned to Google for help, searching for phrases like “young man can’t get it up” or “erection problems” and most sites indicated that it was either performance anxiety or some biological problem like blocked arteries. I pinned it on performance anxiety because I had no trouble getting an erection while looking at porn (which excluded the biological problem as an explanation). Man, this wasn’t just a sex issue, because it was devastating on my self-esteem, my self-confidence, and my sexual identity. Because I couldn’t have sed, I was sexually broken. My emotional health was a mess. Because I was feeding my brain so much dopamine through watching hours of porn, my brain craved more and more stimulation. Over years of doing this, my brain figure out that nothing in the real world could compete with the porn rush. Everyday things just became less stimulating. My friendships became less interesting. I didn’t want to do homework, because compared to porn, who wants to do homework? I was numb to the world. From the age of 10 to 22 or maybe 23, I didn’t cry a single time.”
Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction
“I began to resent myself for this thing I couldn’t get over, and I was told by peers and society that it was a ‘natural’ part of growing from a ‘boy to a man.’ I hated what I was doing and was guilt-ridden most of the time. I lost confidence because I was sure someone would find and expose my filthy secret. I lived in shame and embarrassment. I already hated myself for my porn habits, and I started hating my body too. I didn’t look like the guys in these videos, which (to me) obviously meant that I wasn’t attractive. I couldn’t stand how I started looking at women, so I dabbled in gay porn as well, which then became a common search for me. I thought so little of guys I didn’t see them as lovable people, but as sex-crazed animals. I spent my first year of college hating myself, and not just the porn obsession, but all of me. I figured that if I could deprive myself of necessities, then I could begin to control my sexual urges. So, I stopped eating. I ate as little as I could, once going five days without eating anything. I attempted to make myself throw up when I felt I ate too much. This silence and shame allowed my porn addiction to convince me that I wasn’t a man. That my self-hatred was a worse problem than my addiction. I started to feel secluded from men and extremely uncomfortable about my masculinity. I’ve been hooked to porn since I was seven, and have hated my body since I was 11. It’s a daily struggle, one that sits there and thrives on my boredom and solitude. I don’t want now to be the prime of my life, because I’m still struggling daily with unhealthy thoughts and addictions. I want to win this battle because I’m done being exhausted and defeated. I’m ready to cast my demons aside and live my life to the fullest.”