Elvis on Velvet
Member
Hi everyone. I found this place about a week ago and decided to post my journal today. I'll tell my story here, but first just want to say I am 11 days porn-free today. It's probably the longest period I have not used pornography in 20+ years, with the exception of an involuntary period after a serious motorcycle accident 5 years ago (I don't count that anyway). I've been addicted to porn for a long time, and it's going to stop now.
I'm 47, married for 23 years, and I have two children. After reading so many other peoples' stories here, I realized that mine is very similar to so many others. I started looking at porn at about 12 years old, at first just Playboy, Penthouse, etc. This was before the internet, of course, and options were limited, especially for a 12, 13, 14 year old kid. I have no history of childhood abuse, my home life was pretty good actually, my parents were together, not always super happy, but they made it work with three kids and not a lot of money. I grew up in Los Angeles, so porn, in the form of magazines and later videos on VHS and DVD, was always readily available. My biggest problem was just finding privacy to do my PMO thing in peace. In the early days, it was probably a once a week affair, and I got bored with my little stash of magazines pretty quickly. I'd get my hands on a VHS tape once in a while, which provided the novelty/dopamine hit that fed my nascent addiction. As so many of us came to learn, the advent of the internet changed everything.
I used porn sporadically through middle school and high school. I met my future wife freshman year of college, and we dated through all four years. My porn use and PMO during that time was probably 1-2 times a week; sometimes more, sometimes less, it was all dependent on privacy, which was pretty limited with multiple roommates. Never once did it enter my mind how disrespectful I was of my girlfriend by doing this. I was an entitled little shit.
Fast forward to the year after college, we got married and moved in together. This was the early days of the internet (mid-1990s), and dial up was the norm. I had limited exposure to internet porn, I still mostly relied on DVDs for my PMO fixes, which despite being married now had not reduced in frequency. Things remained like this for several years.
We had our first child in 2000, and I was by now well into a near daily PMO habit which was fed by widely available internet porn and increasingly fast connection speeds. Another child followed in 2003 and if anything, my addiction grew stronger. My wife and I had a decent sex life, as much as can be with two small kids in the mix. We were pretty vanilla as far as sex goes, but my proclivities online were becoming increasingly more fetishized. Things went on like this for several more years.
Fast forward again and I started a job which required me to travel frequently. I think this is where my porn use started to get out of control. I was away from home and alone on the road 3-4 nights every week, living in hotels. PMO became a 1-2 times a day thing. Still, when I got back home, my wife and I would have sex pretty regularly, and I never encountered an ED issue at all.
Again this went on for several years, then smartphones became popular and, coupled with high-speed internet, my porn addiction exploded. In the past several years, my PMO habit was daily, and I almost never missed a day. Home, work, basically wherever I could get away with it. Also, my porn subject matter became increasingly hardcore and fetishized, oncluding things I would never consider in real life. I've been struggling at this stage for probably the past 5-7 years.
About 2 years ago, my doctor switched by blood pressure medication (I have genetic high blood pressure). I'm pretty fit, healthy weight, work out pretty regularly, no smoking, social drinking, no drugs. I had a bad reaction to this medication and experienced a couple of epic anxiety attacks that also coincided with several episodes of ED. I still don't know if the medication was the cause, or if it was PIED. I freaked out about the ED but never made the connection to porn. My doctor put me back on the old medication and gave me a prescription for sildenafil to deal with the ED, which we both assumed would be temporary. I've been using it for sex pretty much every time since then, it works well, and my wife doesn't know. The times I don't use it, I can get a semi-erection or occasionally a full one but it doesn't last long and I need to orgasm quickly or it goes away.
I should add I never experienced the need to do marathon PMO sessions as I've read about here. I've always just been into getting my PMO done, but it was taking increasing variety and increasingly weird stuff to get the job done. Just recently, I experienced VR porn and I was actually a little scared about how dangerous it could have become for me. On day 12 of being clean now, I'm thinking about VR a lot.
On Saturday, October 26th, I was home alone, as I have one child away at college, the other was at a friend's house, and my wife was on a business trip. I had just finished a PMO session, getting off to some particularly disgusting filth, and I had to go pick up my younger child from the friend's house. On the drive there, something snapped in me and I became overwhelmingly disgusted by my addiction, almost to the point of physical illness. I pulled over to the side of the road, and then and there permanently deleted every porn picture and video on my phone, cleared my browser history, deleted all porn bookmarks, and eradicated every bit of porn content or references I could find on my phone. Thankfully, my phone is the only device I used to access porn, so it was essentially out of my life at that point. I just had to deal with my mind now.
So here I am 11 days later, still clean and doing my best to stay that way. I haven't talked to my wife about this and probably won't tbh. I feel like it would hurt her too much to hear about the extent of my addiction. We've had a couple discussions about porn in the past when she's seen stuff on my phone, and they were really hard on both of us. She felt betrayed and I felt like a piece of shit.
Wow, this was longer than I thought, and I probably left out a lot. I've been reading stories here for the past several days, and it's really helped me realize I'm not alone in this. Gabe Deem's videos have been a huge help, too. I'm looking forward to posting here regularly about my progress. Haven't experienced any real withdrawal symptoms yet, but I know it's early in my recovery. I'm grateful for this community.
Thanks for reading.
I'm 47, married for 23 years, and I have two children. After reading so many other peoples' stories here, I realized that mine is very similar to so many others. I started looking at porn at about 12 years old, at first just Playboy, Penthouse, etc. This was before the internet, of course, and options were limited, especially for a 12, 13, 14 year old kid. I have no history of childhood abuse, my home life was pretty good actually, my parents were together, not always super happy, but they made it work with three kids and not a lot of money. I grew up in Los Angeles, so porn, in the form of magazines and later videos on VHS and DVD, was always readily available. My biggest problem was just finding privacy to do my PMO thing in peace. In the early days, it was probably a once a week affair, and I got bored with my little stash of magazines pretty quickly. I'd get my hands on a VHS tape once in a while, which provided the novelty/dopamine hit that fed my nascent addiction. As so many of us came to learn, the advent of the internet changed everything.
I used porn sporadically through middle school and high school. I met my future wife freshman year of college, and we dated through all four years. My porn use and PMO during that time was probably 1-2 times a week; sometimes more, sometimes less, it was all dependent on privacy, which was pretty limited with multiple roommates. Never once did it enter my mind how disrespectful I was of my girlfriend by doing this. I was an entitled little shit.
Fast forward to the year after college, we got married and moved in together. This was the early days of the internet (mid-1990s), and dial up was the norm. I had limited exposure to internet porn, I still mostly relied on DVDs for my PMO fixes, which despite being married now had not reduced in frequency. Things remained like this for several years.
We had our first child in 2000, and I was by now well into a near daily PMO habit which was fed by widely available internet porn and increasingly fast connection speeds. Another child followed in 2003 and if anything, my addiction grew stronger. My wife and I had a decent sex life, as much as can be with two small kids in the mix. We were pretty vanilla as far as sex goes, but my proclivities online were becoming increasingly more fetishized. Things went on like this for several more years.
Fast forward again and I started a job which required me to travel frequently. I think this is where my porn use started to get out of control. I was away from home and alone on the road 3-4 nights every week, living in hotels. PMO became a 1-2 times a day thing. Still, when I got back home, my wife and I would have sex pretty regularly, and I never encountered an ED issue at all.
Again this went on for several years, then smartphones became popular and, coupled with high-speed internet, my porn addiction exploded. In the past several years, my PMO habit was daily, and I almost never missed a day. Home, work, basically wherever I could get away with it. Also, my porn subject matter became increasingly hardcore and fetishized, oncluding things I would never consider in real life. I've been struggling at this stage for probably the past 5-7 years.
About 2 years ago, my doctor switched by blood pressure medication (I have genetic high blood pressure). I'm pretty fit, healthy weight, work out pretty regularly, no smoking, social drinking, no drugs. I had a bad reaction to this medication and experienced a couple of epic anxiety attacks that also coincided with several episodes of ED. I still don't know if the medication was the cause, or if it was PIED. I freaked out about the ED but never made the connection to porn. My doctor put me back on the old medication and gave me a prescription for sildenafil to deal with the ED, which we both assumed would be temporary. I've been using it for sex pretty much every time since then, it works well, and my wife doesn't know. The times I don't use it, I can get a semi-erection or occasionally a full one but it doesn't last long and I need to orgasm quickly or it goes away.
I should add I never experienced the need to do marathon PMO sessions as I've read about here. I've always just been into getting my PMO done, but it was taking increasing variety and increasingly weird stuff to get the job done. Just recently, I experienced VR porn and I was actually a little scared about how dangerous it could have become for me. On day 12 of being clean now, I'm thinking about VR a lot.
On Saturday, October 26th, I was home alone, as I have one child away at college, the other was at a friend's house, and my wife was on a business trip. I had just finished a PMO session, getting off to some particularly disgusting filth, and I had to go pick up my younger child from the friend's house. On the drive there, something snapped in me and I became overwhelmingly disgusted by my addiction, almost to the point of physical illness. I pulled over to the side of the road, and then and there permanently deleted every porn picture and video on my phone, cleared my browser history, deleted all porn bookmarks, and eradicated every bit of porn content or references I could find on my phone. Thankfully, my phone is the only device I used to access porn, so it was essentially out of my life at that point. I just had to deal with my mind now.
So here I am 11 days later, still clean and doing my best to stay that way. I haven't talked to my wife about this and probably won't tbh. I feel like it would hurt her too much to hear about the extent of my addiction. We've had a couple discussions about porn in the past when she's seen stuff on my phone, and they were really hard on both of us. She felt betrayed and I felt like a piece of shit.
Wow, this was longer than I thought, and I probably left out a lot. I've been reading stories here for the past several days, and it's really helped me realize I'm not alone in this. Gabe Deem's videos have been a huge help, too. I'm looking forward to posting here regularly about my progress. Haven't experienced any real withdrawal symptoms yet, but I know it's early in my recovery. I'm grateful for this community.
Thanks for reading.