For me, porn addiction was empty escapism - M's story

Submitted by a reader on Sun, 05/09/2010 - 17:03

a reader's picture

I have had a relationship with porn since I was 9, when I used to look at my father's magazines.

There was something of a lull in my late teens/ early 20's. In my mid 20's I started buying magazines myself, but it was only when I started using the internet in my mid 30's that I became truly obsessive about porn. It contributed to the failure of a relationship and about a year later, during a period of unemployment, I would smoke cannabis and look at porn all day, looking at increasingly bizarre or kinky porn.

There was something of a lull in my late teens/ early 20's. In my mid 20's I started buying magazines myself, but it was only when I started using the internet in my mid 30's that I became truly obsessive about porn. It contributed to the failure of a relationship and about a year later, during a period of unemployment, I would smoke cannabis and look at porn all day, looking at increasingly bizarre or kinky porn.

I felt totally corrupted by porn and wouldn't have been able to break the habit but for a stint of work abroad. The tendencies are still there now, but thankfully I don't have the time or space to indulge in this bad habit (I'm married). All I can say about my porn addiction is that it was pure escapism, fuelled by drugs, and that the ultimate gratification is empty, quite meaningless, and unproductive.

No amount of extreme/ perverted/ graphic porn can compensate for the satisfaction of a loving sexual experience with another person in a relationship.

If anyone is masturbating to porn because they're trying to hide from some problem, then they should bury their pride and get professional help, because life's too short to be wasted on such empty thrills.

Hi M,

Thanks for sharing your experiences and valuable observations here.

I don't think there's much for me to add - you nailed it :)

Here's wishing you every ongoing success in your relationship and future prospects.

YES! This story is proof if ever anyone else needed evidence. That using porn is a total waste of time, & a total waste of money and the end result is utter emptiness! Porn cannot ever be a substitute for a real relationship, you cannot have intimacy with a porn image or porn movie. Porn will never love you, porn will never put arms around you and hold you close. Porn is just sex in the head?

reply

Hey M,

Great work, Kudos to you for kicikng the habit, don't think anyone can add much to what you've said, because you've said it all. Short but sweet & simple , pretty much underlines what we all keep talking about, that this leads to nowhere.

I hope we all can take inspiration from your experience and move forward.

reply

Yep good on you my man.

I still feel the tendencies, as I'm sure so many of us do, but I instinctively line them up against all the regret, resentment and sheer time-wasting that they would always lead to if I acted on them. Seeing the reality, I just snap myself out of it and carry on living.

reply

Hello again,

Well apart from the sheer time wasting (wasted life) the deep regret, the frittering away of money on DVD's etc. Nobody mentions any of the other side effects of using, viewing & consuming online porn. When ever I viewed & used porn on the internet apart from feeling like an emotion wreak (feeling like a steamroller had just run over me) I used to get the most terrible migraine headaches some of which lasted 3-4 days and for which ironically no matter how many pain killers I took the headaches wouldn't go away. It was a kind of psychic & physical self inflicted kind of torture, after many days feeling utterly retched it would slowly melt away. I also used to get aches & pains in my lower back, & of course not surprisingly my libido would be wreaked too and would take many days to recover. My porn habit cost me much more in feeling utterly dreadful than anything else, it also made me feel useless & worthless as a human being. So having a porn habit can have very devastating effects on some people its not something to be taken lightly in my opinion.

reply

Don't you (ALL OF YOU) know WHAT ADDICTION IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Are you not aware that a lot of people know that porn leads to nothing but self destruction.
A lot of people destroy their porn collection than get a new one, than destroy that new one than get another one. The cycle sometimes never stops. many people that watch porn are suffering from OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).
So, please, STOP talking about stopping to watch porn like it was some SIMPLISTIC thing to do.
Go read more about OCD and addiction. Your (ALL OF YOU)comments are like kids comments on a subject they have NO EXPERIENCE ON!

And, the escapist, your story is not necessarily what everybody in the world is going through. SOME PEOPLE HAVE REAL ADDICTION!

And, YES, i meant to shout....

I really wonder when people are gonna start treating porn addiction like any other addiction.

reply

Hi thghst

I recommend you calm down and actually read the discussion. Everyone here has a very real understanding of the nature of porn addiction and how difficult it can be to overcome.

Jason

reply

I think i owe everyone an apology.
It's just that i have been a porn addict for a very long time. I am 23 now. I have tried to stop (for years) a lot of times but, in vain. I tried Google and expected to find help and i fell into this discussion. I am an electrical engineer. My job is my passion. I love being an engineer. The only problem is that i sometimes feel i have no will power because of this porn addiction. I have been doing a lot reading to understand what is happening to me. It has helped me understand but, has not helped me stop .

My apologies again (to everybody)

reply

thghst: It is going to fee great once you finally stop. And you will if you don't give up.

reply

Hey thghst,

Apology accepted no problem :) I know how emotive and frustrating this whole issue is.

It's true that we can read every book and website about the psychology of addiction, gain lots of insight... and still find ourselves reaching for porn two days later. One big reason for this is that the habit doesn't take much notice of logic. Just look at long-term smokers who know exactly what they are doing to their lungs. They still feel unable to quit.

I think that reading and exploring your own habit template is really positive, and I recommend it to everyone. Many of us then need to take these insights and start directly addressing programmed beliefs about themselves, unhelpful memories and dealing with unmet needs.

A successful quitting strategy has two parts: proactive (reading, sharing, building self-awareness) and reactive (managing urges, journalling). Some techniques work for us, some don't - it's trial and error. So we need to stay open to new ideas, which is a challenge in itself, I know. Porn addiction just makes us want to shut down and download more porn.

Staying with the smoking theme, I remember my father telling me that he quit a 20 year habit when the price of cigarettes went up one year. He decided that the tobacco companies and the government were making too much money out of him, smoked his last packet (so not to waste £5) and never smoked again.

Some of the porn addiction success stories that people tell me remind me of my father, and M's is one of them. They just got too busy to look at porn, or got married, or decided it was a waste of time. On the surface, it seems that their habits did listen to logic.

Now a 'real' smoker would say that my father wasn't really addicted, and a 'real' porn addict might well feel the same about M. But it completely depends on the individual, and their own competing beliefs, values and needs. Once an essential need is fully met (my Dad's refusal to be 'taken advantage of', M's desperation to escape boredom), a tipping point can occur.

For those of us that continue to struggle with porn, these are positive signals. As FL points out, it's about not giving up and staying open to trying new approaches, even in the face of setbacks and frustration.

Through this process, I have seen guys with devastating, 20 year+ porn habits make real, lasting changes.

reply

Thanks FL and Jason. I will not stop trying. That is decision i made a long time ago. But, you have to admit that not having will power sounds rather stupid...
And, Jason, i like your stopping strategy. I however don't think that i will ever tell anybody that i am a porn addict. People respect me at work and in my family. I have little brothers and sisters that look up to me. And i definitely don't want my mother to know about my addiction. So, i think i will live out the sharing part of the stopping strategy.

Thanks again.

reply

That's absolutely fine - the methods that you adopt have to work for you as an individual.

If anyone ever says that you have to tell all your family, or you have to attend a group, or even that you will be an 'addict in recovery' for the rest of your life... they might have good intentions but they are pushing their own agenda. We've learned that there are many different ways to tackle this issue.

reply

Hello thghst,

Actually I had a very long standing chronic porn habit which started when I was 14 years old & I have grappled on & off with porn usage for many years, I'm now 51 years old & have become 98-99% free from my past habits. I use OpenDNS content filtering so explicit material is not really an issue as its not available. So I don't get triggered as I used to in the past. And partly I just not interested in porn as I used to be, I've seemingly grown out of the attraction to porn. Actually porn is just the most boring thing on the planet now to me, so I'd rather not even bother with it.

I know you apologuised for your previous rant (outburst) and thats good & appreciated too. It proves you reflected on what you had said. But there is a very useful insight here & that is different people are affected by their porn usage in different ways. So for example if you already have OCD & have a porn habit the OCD is definitely going to make the porn habit more difficult to deal with. The OCD may impact the porn habit in a way many others are not impacted but having a porn habit is difficult to deal with per say! Having depression may mean your not interested in porn or if you are it may only make the depression worse. In other words porn impacts our mental healthy & mental emotional well being and this is yet another subject area not often touched on so your comments ARE relevant and ARE important here.

reply

This may be a stupid question and all but how can you tell if you are depressed? I have had to do research on it in psychology class and i know most of the symptoms and almost all of them match me but I'm still not convinced I'm depressed. Is there a way to be sure, because this just seems normal to me because I have felt like this for three to four years now. Sometimes i even feel good like today but I know it will soon fade.

reply

Thanks Alex. I think i have changed the subject of this discussion. It was not my intention :(
I read somewhere that the best way of getting rid of old habits is not to use will power but, to replace them with new habits. That is what i have been trying to do. The only problem is that my laptop is my best friend. I do all my work on my laptop. It is also indispensable that i have internet. I think i will also try to get openDNS content filtering

reply

Hello again thghst

YES! well a bit similar really, I have x3 computers (desktops) and they are all my good friends and I too have daily need of my web connection too. I cannot recommend OpenDNS highly enough, for me its been a really important tool for change. Its really helped me a great deal. The reason is a) I've personally made a conscious choice to do this to avoid porn b) it helps me avoid stumbling because I am avoiding many potential triggers c) Its helped me shift my thought processes away from even thinking about porn, I don't dwell on porn any more. d) I can use the Internet with renewed self confidence that I'm just not going to end up on any of those old websites I used to view. i.e. no nasty surprises. e) Its free and secure, you have control you have a choice to either filter or go unfiltered, there are many helpful categories that can be selected to filter not just porn.

The other nice feature of openDNS is that once you have registered for free, you receive your own personal Dashboard which gives you access to many of the features & some of the more advanced features. Once you make a change the settings take effect in about 3 mins. Its very good indeed its amazing for a free service (pure gold). enough said.

its been a life saver for me, having this kind of content filtering in place puts a firm boundary between myself (my weakness's or vulnerabilities depending upon how you view it)

reply

Post new comment

Drupal theme by Kiwi Themes.