Wired and buzzing - SY's story

This frank anecdote from SY explains just how controlling the porn habit instinct can become:

I'll spare you the preamble about my porn habit and cut straight to this anecdote. I think it explains just how caught up in the porn addiction trap I have become.

One weekend last year, two events coincided to cause me much anticipation and excitement. My company (where I work as the IT expert) had 16mb broadband installed, and my girlfriend (who I live with) went away for the weekend for a friend's hen party.

As a guy hooked on porn bittorrent files, I just couldn't believe my luck. A whole weekend of top-speed, unlimited downloading and viewing. I feel embarrassed explaining this now, but I had it all planned out.

I wasn't going to risk watching porn at the office, just in case other people were working over the weekend. So on the Friday night, I set up a PC there with a remote control bittorrent client. I unplugged the monitor, of course. Then I drove home with mounting excitement about the evening I was going to spend setting up torrent downloads via my home PC. Isn't technology marvellous. By Saturday morning, I should have a whole load of hardcore downloaded movies to watch remotely. I planned to copy then off the office machine first thing Monday morning to my portable drive. Apologies for the techy detail, but I thought I was being ever so cunning.

So with the house to myself, and porn adrenaline pumping through me, I spent several hours that Friday night connected to the office PC. At least 4 hours previewing and setting up countless torrent downloads. Just before I finally decided to go to bed (long day of porn viewing tomorrow...), I couldn't resist checking the download progress one more time. It was like I was electrically connected to the whole process... wired and buzzing.

Shit. The office PC has frozen. I'd probably overloaded it with downloads. Nothing coming down the line. Shit. Now here's the moment of insanity. It's around midnight on Friday, and I'm getting into my car to drive the 28 miles to the office to reboot that PC. I'm putting my coat on thinking 'this is crazy'. I'm reaching for my car keys thinking 'why am I doing this?'. It really was like something else was controlling my actions. I drove 28 miles, arrived at the closed-down office, deactivated the security system, went to my desk, rebooted the PC, made sure it was ok, reactivated the security system and drove 28 miles back home again.

Then I spent another 2 hours or so remotely setting up porn downloads again.

Suffice to say that the rest of that weekend dissolved into a blur of porn, masturbation, self-loathing, more porn, eating ice-cream, more porn. I didn't leave the house all weekend. The only interruption was a couple of loving calls from my girlfriend, and I couldn't wind up those conversations fast enough to get back to the porn.

Now I'd like to say that this was my rock-bottom. I'd like to say that I realised then and there how pathetic and pointless my frantic activities were, and something clicked and I never buzzed over porn again.

Well, I did realise... but it still didn't stop me.

Forward to now. I'm working on the problem. I'm reading sites like this and planning to visit a therapist. I still have my girlfriend, but we haven't had sex for over 5 months. We don't talk about it.

At least 12 of my 27 years have been dominated and directed by the need to watch porn. Somehow, I am going to change.

Thank you SY for sharing your story. There's little I need to add here; you so accurately describe the ridiculous extremes our habits can lead us to.

I wish you every success in working with a therapist, and formulating your plan for kicking the habit in the long term.