My escalating pornography habit, and determination to stop - S's story

Submitted by a reader on Tue, 23/02/2010 - 21:17

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I first began looking at porn when I was about 13 years old. I was in the height of puberty. A friend of mine sent me a "hacker" (so-called) application for AIM, and among the files for this program I found some underage porn photos. Of course, I was thirteen at the time, so these girls were still older than I was! This led me to search on the internet. This habit only intensified as the internet speed increased.

We got cable internet when I was in high school and it was like opening a flood gate. There were times when I was engaged in a social life and I was not that frequently using pornography. These, looking back, were the happiest times I remember. But there were long periods, especially as time went on, when I would use pornography for masturbation daily, often several times.

The habit became problematic when I realized that I was becoming very selective about the material I was viewing. When at first a single picture would bring a quick orgasm, at this point, I was spending up to several hours browsing before I could reach orgasm. I was only around 16 or 17 at this time.

My first year of college, I spent around $500 on pay site subscriptions. After that year, I discovered pirated video sites and was able to obtain hours worth of video for free, constantly. At the end of my degree, I experienced a depression, which I am sure was brought on by a lack healthy relationships in my life. During this time, oddly enough, I began to quit porn. I think this was due to the fact that my depressed mind couldn't bear the guilty feelings. This depression persisted for about a year.

Then, I got a job (not a career) and spent my days working full-time or more. At this job, I met a girl that I had a real connection with. We began seeing each other and quickly realized that we something special. During this time, I stayed porn free, but the depression and anxiety I was feeling persisted full force.

Flash forward nine months. I decide to go back to school and get a second degree, and the girl and I decide to get married. We set the date for next September. I began occasionally looking at porn during this time. Sometimes I would look at things that I wouldn't have dreamed of looking at before, such as gay porn and bestiality. This brought on real worries. But, mostly I would look at amateur posting sites.

Eventually, I discussed with her my constant sexual needs and she said that it was okay if I looked at some porn. However, I began to realize how like a drug porn was. I began to think about the high feeling that I felt in my body and my mind during and after, and then the lacklustre feeling that would follow later on. I began to notice the escalation and the longer and longer sessions of porn use. I decided that it was time to quit.

That brings me up to the present. I have been a week without porn. I am tense. My sleep has been disturbed. I have tried masturbating without the porn a few times. I was successful, but the act held none of the rush of good feelings that porn use held in the past. I am resolved. I will not go back. I see that in the week without, I have become more honest in my relationships, and I have been looking for life in my actual life. But it is damn hard, I have to say. I have a confidence that this struggle will eventually pass and my life will be much richer for it. But its still one of the hardest things I have faced in my life. I am 25. Though I still deal with anxiety, I haven't felt the feeling of depression for several months.

Thank you S for this insight into your experiences with porn. It really is a heartfelt and thoughtful account.

Many people find that their porn surfing sessions become longer and more intense. And it feels more and more like acting on autopilot. A big part of us is bored and jaded by all the porn that we've trawled through. But the habit instinct leads us on anyway, feverishly searching for that image. So porn sessions take on a trance-like nature; feeling peculiarly numbed and aroused at the same time.

After a while, our body really doesn't know how to respond. Orgasms become dulled and less intense, literally going through the motions. This becomes an empty and depressing ritual.

You make a very relevant point about your girlfriend too. It's natural for partners to underestimate just how strong our attachment to porn is. So what if he looks at some sexy websites now and again? So they are open and cool about it. But our habit just gets a green light to indulge even more.

So I wish you the very best over the coming weeks. And it may take some weeks for your reward systems to adjust. You are switching off a coping behaviour that developed over many years. This is a tough experience.

Please do explore some of the advice on other posts of this blog, and put in place a simple action plan rather than white-knuckling this out. Arming yourself with some techniques for surfing urges and developing a rational, observing self can certainly make giving up porn a lot easier.

Hello,

I don't underestimate the difficulty of having an on going porn habit, nor how difficult a process it is in trying to give up such behavior. I just know from bitter past experience that no matter how much sheer will power is used doing "cold turkey" doesn't in fact work. In fact it sometimes can back fire with regrettable results that it can in fact strengthen the grip of such behavior.

OK! so how should anyone wanting to give up on a porn habit proceed. Well, its not easy for sure but I'd suggest that the sudden withdrawal approach doesn't work so we have to take a slower less more gentle method. i.e. slowly slowly catchee monkey as it were.

a) Start with reducing the amount of time spent on using & viewing porn or explicit material online or off line. Why? because you need to start to create a space or gap between you and porn.

b) Slowly reducing your dependency on porn will inevitable bring up many mixed emotions as the numbing (pain killing) effects of porn slowly wear off. i.e. those feelings or situations you were attempting to avoid. This is were having some kind of emotional support from close friends or even a counselor can help a great deal.

c) As time goes on try to focus your energy away from using porn and try to channel that new time & energy into activities that bring you more real emotional fulfillment, like socializing or making new friends, in fact anything that takes you away from screen time.

d) I'm a BIG believer in trying to reconnecting with your deeper self by allowing sexual fantasy along with ordinary masturbation as a way to have pleasure but without the pain caused by porn usage. In other words masturbate that's completely fine but try NOT to use porn for that purpose. i.e. masturbate but no porn. Just your own feelings & fantasies. Meaning that giving up on porn doesn't mean you have to give up on your sexual self nor deny yourself pleasure.

e) if you have had a long struggle with porn like I did then I recommend having counseling or therapy which is what helped me ultimate get porn free.

f) DON'T expect instant results though, it may take longer than expected to reach a point of zero dependency on porn. Also bear in mind we live in a culture were the individual is surrounded & literally bombarded with sex imagery. That's what makes this a hard process, nobody said it would be easy, its not and that's a fact.

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I don't know if I agree with " masturbate without porn" advice. I think the real problem is masturbating, porn just helps to have a quicker and better one. People watch porn to masturbate. That's what I think people are addicted to. Porn just speeds up the process and gives your an orgasem based on the images that are fantasy. But so is masturbating without porn. When you masturbate without porn, your mind looks for images stuck in your head which most of the time are fantasy. I think the porn problem is getting addicted to a fantasy world, how does using the fantasy from your head helping the problem?!?!?

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I am not a professional, so I can't really give you any advice. But I would say that the best advice would be to get professional help.
And the other thing I want to add is : connect with your partner, make love, have sex with her more often, share your fantasies with her, roleplay, have fun, stay active, maybe act on some fantasies you have with your partner. That would bring you closer and be fun.But again, this is just my idea, not a professional one.

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I have to echo (agree) with L's comments. Yet another comment I would make is that by creating secrecy & viewing & using porn behind closed doors, porn tends to isolate us. NOT just in the act of viewing & using porn but we isolate ourselves in that we then start to carry around our feelings of shame & guilt. And if nothing feels more lonely its carrying around a massive amount (like baggage) of shame & guilt.

This is why I agree with L the more you "connect" with others, friends, family & partners etc the less isolated you become, the less important & less reliant on porn you become. I've learned over the years that porn is bad for me and I remain vulnerable to its siren call thus I have to basically try to avoid it.

If I use porn its often because I have difficult feelings and nobody to share them with and that can be hard, but you know what. If I use porn I end up feeling x10 times worse, I end up feeling like shit. THAT'S WHY!! I gave up using porn because I didn't want to end up feeling that bad any more. For me that was all I needed to give up. I just didn't want to be that disconnected from myself or other people.

In my opinion I came to see that porn is actually a choice. You, me, we DO HAVE a choice weather to indulge in porn or to walk away and choose something different. Something that doesn't crucify us on the cross of our own obsessional pain & distress. Porn is incredibly paradoxical its a very strange thing porn, porn seems to be a kind of digital psychic plague of our times.

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Based on my experience, I'm not sure I'd recommend immediately trying to replace your porn addiction with spicier and more frequent sex with your partner. If that worked, I'm sure you wouldn't feel the need for the porn in the first place. That's because this porn problem isn't about sex, but about escape/numbing emotions.

I found in my relationship with my husband that our sex life and his porn habit got very messily tangled up in each other over the years, and, therefore, we both actually needed to *not* have sex with each other (or at least not make that the biggest priority) for a while while he attempted to sort out his porn issues.

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Like the fellow in the true story, I have been using porn more in the last two or three years. I masturbated with porn for a long time but since it became a real addiction, I don't masturbate as much. I spend more time searching and downloading porn and watching it but (at least every day) but only masturbate maybe a couple of times a month. I do not have a girlfriend. When I do pleasure myself I think about things that turn me on, and a lot of those things come from porn. But masturbating doesn't feel like the addiction to me. It's the porn I can't stop spending time with.

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Yea like I said, I'm not a professional. I just looked at it from the partner's point of view. As a partner I would love my husband to share his fantasies with me. I think we all have our own fantasies and I feel that when your in a relationship, you should experiment with each other fantasies know porn is not about sex, but how can we say that for sure?!?! Everybody is different. How can we say that all people that have a porn problem is not about sex? Porn is exciting, shocking, fun. People CHOSE to watch porn instead of trying to build an exciting relationship because either the partner is not up for it or because they are lazy and don't want to put the effort into it, when porn is easy. You CHOSE watch porn and masturbate. You CHOSE to spend hours and money on porn. You CHOSE to delete the internet history when your done, so your partner doesn't see it. You CHOSE to go back to it the next day. And guess what, when you can't that close and fun relationship with your partner or people around you, that was your choice. Instead you can chose to do something fun in the real life.

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No.1 I DON'T think the problem is porn itself but our relationship with porn. i.e. what we do or how we use porn.

No.2 Porn can superficially appear exciting, fun, funny, escapism but you always pay a negative price for such self indulgence after the event. With feeling bad, shameful, guilty, isolated, feeling empty or even rather disconnected. Not to mention how much it utterly can wreck your self esteem.

No.3 I personally don't feel that either masturbation or sex are the real problem here. The central problem with porn is how it negatively impacts on the person and how it has a bad effect on a person's psyche.

No.4 Porn tends to have a disconnecting effect on the individual were as having loving sexual relations with a girl/boy friend or wife would tend to bring you both closer & lead to a better sense of connectedness i.e. enrich your experience of intimacy.

No.5 Porn wreck's your ability to relate intimately, or loss of intimacy is one of the most terrible side effects of using porn. Especially if you have a chronic or longer run porn habit.

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There is no such a thing as "porn addiction". Its just an excuse to look at porn. The same way that "sex addiction" is an excuse for cheating on us women. Like we are suppose to feel bad for them because they have an addiction. Is all a game and an excuse for men to be weak!!

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@H Pornography enables the user to get an easier dose of dopamine, thus having a potential for addiction. You sound like a feminist. No, i'm sorry, you sound like a SEXIST.

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S,

I can't pretend to understand how hard it is to stay away from porn. But keep it up, its worth it.

My husband has been porn free for two weeks. The change in him is amazing so far. I'm not saying that his strugle is over or that he will never go back to it again, but what I am trying to say is that people around you get affected by your porn usage. I am sure you will be a much better lover and partner once you go through this. Even if you already are a good lover and partner, I'm sure staying away from porn would bring you closer to your fiance and people around you.

Keep it up, your doing a good job so far, and you can say bye to porn for good. Its worth it!!!

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Using porn or having a porn habit is like throwing a large rock into a still pond, it creates waves and these waves have an impact not just on the individual but also to those that surround that person. The waves ripple outwards in all directions i.e. 360 degree's. I think if you use porn regularly some friends, or family or partners can & do sense that something is not quite right, they may not be able to put their finger on the precise cause but I think porn users put out subliminal messages about themselves or at least non verbal ques. It may just be a subtle change in a persons energy. Other can sense something different IMO.

**Please can I suggest something that I have found very helpful when trying to avoid online porn. This is aimed at anyone who is struggling with the porn habit no matter how mild or strong, light or intense. I found OpenDNS who offer a free HTTP (web) content filtering service, you register for a free account, and you are given a free dashboard, from the advanced settings on the dashboard you can set up various degree's of content filtering from no filtering through mild, intermediate to strong, or custom (you can select from upto x30 different categories) What I am suggesting is NOT that anyone else sets this up & imposes this on you. But that you yourself choose this filtering that way it could be seen & felt as a way to take responsibility for yourself and for keeping you away from sites you would otherwise fall back on once again. SEE:- http://www.opendns

Another alternative offering similar features is a FREE software program called K9 web protection that can be installed locally on your PC or even on a number of machines. This also offers a similar filtering service based on a large number of categories too. Note: that although this software is aimed mainly at parents & children its could still provide a valuable safety net for those adult users who want to try to avoid porn on the web.

SEE:-http://www1.k9webprotection.com/

NOTE:- The advantage of both OpenDNS & K9 web protection is that once put in place they cannot be got around because both function at the highest level of the internet. You cannot hack them, the only way around both is to remove them completely. But you do have full control over what you choose & how or what to filter. It could be a useful tool along the long path of recovery from chronic porn usage. Its only a suggestion.

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"I think if you use porn regularly some friends, or family or partners can & do sense that something is not quite right, they may not be able to put their finger on the precise cause but I think porn users put out subliminal messages about themselves or at least non verbal ques. It may just be a subtle change in a persons energy. Other can sense something different IMO."

Alex, yes, this was very true in my experience. Even before I discovered that my husband was watching porn, I could strongly sense that there was just something "off" about him. He'd often seem spacey, disconnected and sometimes even morose in a way that would freak me out. And your use of the term "energy" is spot on--not to sound too weird and New Agey, but there really was an almost black-hole type of energy about him. I'd often feel nervous and on-edge in his presence. Why I didn't run in the other direction is something I still can't figure out (actually, we had been friends years before this and I think his porn addiction had seriously progressed in the time we had been away from each other and I was still thinking of him as the person I had known before, so I brushed aside my uneasy feelings).

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H--Clearly there are people here who are saying they have a problem with stopping porn. They're not here because of their wives or girlfriends (some don't even have a significant other), they're here because they've tried to stop and they can't do it on their own, which is distressing to them. Whether or not you believe porn addiction exists, please don't dismiss these people's feelings and experiences.

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Hello again,

I have to strongly agree with Margaux's comments.

**I think what you label a condition "IS extremely important" because that has a large influence in the way your going to try & fix or cure the situation & that includes the methods used. But even I myself have to concede that having a serious porn problem is a gray area & that makes definitions difficult. I accept that most people are going to use the terminology addiction even if I disagree with this. In my opinion the vast majority of people don't actually have a porn addiction, but what they do have is much closer to an obsession, or a compulsion, a chronic habit or pattern of repeated behavior. Its like a record with a broken track so the needle is stuck in the same groove.

**One thing I do agree with which a previous contributor here said, is that calling something a porn addiction whilst be a highly emotive label. Should be used as an excuse to carry on being self indulgent, selfish or avoid responsibility for your own negative behaviors. i.e. I'll carry on watching & viewing porn, Oh!! well I cannot help it I have a porn addiction, WRONG!! that's just self deception IMO. Having a porn habit doesn't make it OK and the person you hurt most anyway is only yourself.

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Sorry! That should have read:- "Should NOT be" used as an excuse to carry on being self indulgent, selfish or avoid responsibility for your own negative behaviors. i.e. I’ll carry on watching & viewing porn,

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Does anybody know of any kind of filters for blackberry phones?

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The reason it's hard for me to stomach the "excuse" accusation is this: An excuse to *whom*? There are certainly plenty of porn addicts (or compulsives, or whatever you want to call them) who seek help because they don't want to lose their significant others. But there are also plenty of people, as we see here on this site, who are seeking help on their own, often without a significant other's knowledge or without a significant other in their lives at all.

And if this is a behavior they're trying to stop, how can it even be an excuse to themselves? They're holding themselves accountable.

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I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not engaging in yet another debate about whether or not it should be called an addiction, I'm simply saying that the "excuse" accusation denies that there's a problem *at all*--whatever you want to call it--when there are clearly a very large number of people who feel that it's a problem for them.

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I think calling it an addiction has two sides. The good side is that sometimes people won't realize how important this issue is until you give it a name.Calling it an addiction might help some people open their eyes and do something about it.
On the other side, calling it an addiction kinda gives it a meaning like there is something that you can't control. And I don't agree with that. Porn dependency or addiction is not a disease, its not something out of your control. People have gotten themselves in that mess from their choices. It should be their choice to stop it too think you won't be able to stop it until you realize that all was your choice. I don't know if I agree with the underlying problems that push some men to watch porn. We all have unresolved issues that you sometimes are not even aware of, but not everybody uses porn or any other easy solution to deal with it.
If you ask me, the underlying problem is simply laziness. Laziness to put the work into creating real relationship with people around you. Why would you put the time and effort into making your partner happy, when you can be selfish and lazy enough to satisfy yourself, with all these fake women that will do anything you want them to. And feeling bad afterward must not feel that bad, cause you go back to it.

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The whole definition of porn addiction is certainly difficult to pin down.

Dependency, excuse, guilt trip, ego trip, bad choice, selfishness, solipsism, laziness ... I think all of these are in the mix. Partners get dragged into the 'game' and there are so many shifting roles depending on how he's acting on a particular day. Which is deeply frustrating, to say the least.

I've just posted a quick summary of how the psychotherapy community might be starting to view the issue. It touches on choice and responsibility, and the potential for deeper issues, but an agreed definition will probably remain elusive for a good while yet.

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Hi L - that's a good question about filtering on a Blackberry. I've seen several forum discussions asking the very same question, but there doesn't seem to be any filter solution. Some guys have resorted to stripping code out of the browser software, but sounds like too much potential to break the whole thing to me!

Apparently there are filtering products coming out for the iPhone.

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I've actually resorted to getting rid of my phone and buying a real basic one without internet access. I hope this will last and i won't just go out and buy a better one again.

Good luck everyone

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I know that in the modern world religion is not a solution for everyone anymore. But, it still may be interesting to hear some religious perspectives, and some may find it helpful, if you are someone who is inclined to faith in a religion. Personally, I feel that a sense of faith or spirituality is a basic human need. But, this is only a personal idea. These days, it seems very hard to talk about basic human needs, at least psychologically.

http://oldarchive.godspy.com/life/Gandhi-on-Sex-Marriage-and-Birth-Contr...

The link above refers to an article about the beliefs of Mahatma Gandhi regarding human sexuality. He was obviously a hard-liner on these issues, and it isn't likely that his views will be acceptable to people living in the modern world. But, I believe that they do offer something to think about for some one experiencing a crisis of his or her sexuality. The positive idea for those struggling with uncontrolled lust and pornography habits is that you can live without sex if you choose too, and you can live a truly happy and fulfilling life. For me, this is a different view than what I held in the past. I used to think that clergy members and holy men were lying to themselves about their sexual needs.

Of course, it has been shown that some members of religious organizations - alarmingly many - are actually indulgent in their sexual urges. I think that everyone can accept such restraint to a degree that varies from person to person. But, I do believe that the unhappy process of disciplining ones urges and desires can lead to a more fulfilling, happier day to day life in the long run.

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