Moving Forward

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
Day 51

I have just turned 40, have an 8 month old baby and have completed 50 days without PMO. My story is dark, including some details about illegal and really bad behaviour on my part which may be hard to read; so please be advised before continuing any further. I want to record it as a cautionary tale.

I have had a problem with online porn addiction for many years, and before that issues with porn and compulsive masturbation. Although there have been periods where I have abused porn less frequently, the stresses of getting older and and years of unhealthy coping mechanisms have resulted in the problem growing and getting out of control. I gave up drinking and smoking when my partner got pregnant, so had been using porn as my main form of stress relief. Before the past 7 weeks I had been unable to enjoy the most joyous, pure light of my life (my baby) because of a dark secret.

A few months ago, my partner and I decided to sleep in separate rooms so that we could sleep better (but also because post-partum depression was becoming a strain on us both). Around this time my porn use started to escalate due to the stress. During this time I had started to look at bestiality and other messed up things, feeling dirty, but pushing it out of my mind as soon as I had finished up and the disgust had melted away. I was opening up to 50 browsers at a time and spending hours looking for something that would give me a hit. I would be tired and grumpy in the morning, even when I hadn't looked after the baby in the night. The ages of the people in the videos were getting younger too, although I had already started to explain this away in my head. One of the sites I was viewing regularly had some CSEM material, where someone had posted a private video of someone underage. It felt like someone had punched me and I felt sick. I reported the video and clicked off the site, promising myself I would never go on the site again. In reality, I carried on, and I started to view and get off to things that had made me feel sick previously, and feeling like I was unable to stop. I realised that I was doing something really fucked up, but I couldn't face it. I knew I was sick, but I didn't know what was me, and what wasn't, or just how sick I was. So I stopped looking at porn for 4 days and started researching porn addiction. On the 3rd day, my partner and baby went away to grandparents. There was some LSD in the house from a long time ago, and decided to take it. I needed some release from the stress, but also I thought it would help me confront my demons. At some point during the night, I decided to look at some legal porn. It didn't really work on me, given the desensitisation I had put myself through. My fucked up brain told me to just be honest with myself and my desires and do it one last time. The realisation of how far I had sunk reverberated around my head for the next 8 hours. I was going to lose everything, my baby, my partner, my family, my friends, everything. I felt like a monster. The next morning I called my partner back to the house and told her everything.

She decided to support me instead of leaving, which I had expected her to. I emailed an organisation which specialises in these kinds of messed up situations and started researching in earnest about why I had done this. I also had to consider, honestly, what kind of offender I was. I learned about the process of escalation, and it seemed to make sense, although others had not gone as far as I had. But I couldn't be sure if that was really the case, or if I was trying to downplay the seriousness of the situation. I decided to keep journaling and write down triggers, urges etc. Most importantly I realised that I can never use porn again, because it is a slippery slope that I cannot control, and will only and inevitably lead to darkness. Throughout all of this, there was a part of me still justifying having viewed CSEM material online, and believing it not having any real world effect. This is not true. It fuels and maintains the cycles of abuse. I had to face that I had been a part of this process. I also started to have what I guess is some kind of guilt reaction/OCD where if I was near someone of an age similar to the CSEM videos I felt sick. The more I researched, the more I learned about the processes of sensitisation and desensitisation, about how the brain mistakes guilt and revulsion for arousal in its quest for a dopamine fix. 50 days of no PMO and I can see the truth of this; and though it does not negate what happened, it does show some light for the future.

Personal journaling has led to me confronting the story of my addiction, which was not only the worst thing I did. It has been a long and sorry road; one in which I have seemed to be able to justify any bad behaviour because I had a hard on. I knew that my morals were completely different when I had porn brain, but I just wouldn't let myself see the problem that it was. I have been obsessed with videoing/photoing partners over the years and been obsessed with the idea of them sleeping with other guys and videoing it. I wanted them to become my own personal pornstar, even if that wasn't their fantasy, and I would insert it into sex whenever I could. I collected bikini shots from FB and IG of people that I knew in a folder, also nudes of model friends. I deleted this folder a number of times, knowing it was messed up. Until 50 days ago, I was still masturbating to videos and pictures I had made with exes. It wasn't until the reboot that I really faced how bad this was. Even a few days ago on my birthday, I had to delete an old conversation thread with an ex because it contained material that was suddenly calling me (all traces are gone now).

The process has been difficult. I have felt withdrawals quite acutely, and also many urges. Triggers were Pavlovian. Just sitting in front of my computer for work at the beginning triggered urges. I have had an anxious stomach ache for a lot of the time, and also have woken up in the middle of the night with urges. In times of stress my brain says it will be so much easier if I just look at porn. I also have intrusive thoughts from time to time, flashes of some of the dark material I want to delete from my brain. I didn't MO for a few weeks (but find that I have started to every night at the moment). I have been taking cold showers for the duration. I have also stopped looking at social media for the most part. I am aware that this trips people up, and I've come close. I have been reading and researching about addiction a lot, which has helped and reading people's journals on here has been eye-opening. I have started to read books and make more music this time. Also walking in the park with my baby most days and being a lot more present has been magical. I am not wondering if I deserve to be parent and what kind of example am I setting. In general I feel back in control of my life, even if it's not perfect or especially smooth. I want to be a better person going into the future. I want to be a better partner and father. I have a long way to go. Although it's not good to obsess over numbers, 90 days is my first goal.

If you have read this far, thank you for reading and I'm sorry for the many shitty things I've done.

PS. Reading the Easy Peasy book has been really helpful for me. I read Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking and it really helped me in the process of quitting. Although not every section worked entirely for me, as a whole, I find it effective, if you can let yourself trust its reasoning.
 

Aeodh Dan

Active Member
It's amazing when you consider the depth of porn, how it dominates your psyche. Morals and ethics are obsolete, it's just a dark, dark place.
My preferred thing was sadism particularly towards females, but I discovered that it was a result of my hatred towards my mother when I was quite young. So, there are reasons for the particular fetishes and porn "preferences".
I am just over fifty, and have had a 40 year long porn career, starting with my Dad's playboy and penthouse mags.
My wife left, and my kids are adults, so it's just me and the dog, but the journey to recovery is long overdue. I am at day 73 and also going for the initial 90 day "reboot", but since I don't have a sexual partner anymore, I am doing "monk mode". So, after 90 days, I will just keep going....
The rest of my life must revolve around my recovery from porn addiction, and I think the time is now, it's a transition from one stage to the next; I am redefining my priorities, it's ultimately a Spiritual journey for me, and also a harnessing of precious energy that I used to waste.
I did read your whole post, and I can say that it takes courage to admit to the details of the addiction, even if it is on an anonymous forum, but ultimately, you are helping yourself more than anything by getting this shit to the surface!
 

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
It's amazing when you consider the depth of porn, how it dominates your psyche. Morals and ethics are obsolete, it's just a dark, dark place.
My preferred thing was sadism particularly towards females, but I discovered that it was a result of my hatred towards my mother when I was quite young. So, there are reasons for the particular fetishes and porn "preferences".
I am just over fifty, and have had a 40 year long porn career, starting with my Dad's playboy and penthouse mags.
My wife left, and my kids are adults, so it's just me and the dog, but the journey to recovery is long overdue. I am at day 73 and also going for the initial 90 day "reboot", but since I don't have a sexual partner anymore, I am doing "monk mode". So, after 90 days, I will just keep going....
The rest of my life must revolve around my recovery from porn addiction, and I think the time is now, it's a transition from one stage to the next; I am redefining my priorities, it's ultimately a Spiritual journey for me, and also a harnessing of precious energy that I used to waste.
I did read your whole post, and I can say that it takes courage to admit to the details of the addiction, even if it is on an anonymous forum, but ultimately, you are helping yourself more than anything by getting this shit to the surface!
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

This being a lifelong journey is something that resonates with me. And also the spiritual aspect. I think rather than creating a hole, moving on from this necessitates another mode of existence and viewing life and the world. And an active search for meaning rather than actively suffocating it and setting it on fire.

Congratulations on day 73. And many more to come!
 

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
Day 52

I had no major issues today. I sat down half naked at the computer (because of the heat) to make some music and had an urge. It was just a programmed response and nothing too strong. I still get a feeling of anxiety/anticipation when I sit down at the computer to write this at the end of the day.

I caught myself ogling people on the train to work but have been catching myself and looking away almost all of the time at the moment.

A sexy woman in the office was wearing hotpants today. I got a flutter in my stomach and loins when she walked past. It wasn't really a big deal but I want to program myself out of it at work, especially as she is a real person and I don't want to sexualise her/ogle like I have in the past. I have masturbated thinking about her too many times.

My partner and I had sex last night for the first time in a while, which was great. I needed to finish quickly so I imagined having sex with a cousin of mine. For the past couple of years she has entered my fantasies in progressively dirtier ways. I guess the taboo aspect has been a turn on. At the beginning of the reboot I realised that this wasn't healthy and stopped doing it until yesterday. I don't want to fantasise about others during sex with my partner anymore, especially not about my cousin. The thing I realised today is that I didn't even consider not O'ing. I could have just stopped it, as it was nice, with no real pressure to O. However, it didn't occur to my porn brain that it's not necessary - but, it's always about the guy's climax.

One thing I would like to learn from the reboot is what is porn and what is me. It has been so long that I don't know anymore.
 

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
When I was young, there was a drawer in the chest of drawers in the dining room. All the other drawers had photos of family in them, except for this drawer. This drawer had albums and albums of photos of girls in bikinis on the beach in Hong Kong from my dad's time there (that's when and where he and my mum met). My brother, sisters and I all found it strange, creepy and amusing when we were younger and wondered what my mum felt about it. We have never asked, and I don't think we ever will. As with many things about my father (while he was still alive) I vowed never to be like him, and couldn't imagine doing something like that. Fast forward a few decades and I have my own folder full of girls in bikinis, partner and all.
 

Simon2

Well-Known Member
I think many of us have such a drawer in our past, real or metaphorical. A place where we experienced something that excited us but also made us feel dirty. Maybe a secret we kept from others, or even being abused ourselves. For me it all started when my step father molested my sisters and I knew about it but couldn't process it or stand up to him. It made me feel so guilty and then I was convinced I was sick like him when I started having my own sexual urges. Well, that's pretty dark compared to your drawer - but I think it's similar in some ways.
 

Aeodh Dan

Active Member
This process can be tough while maintaining a sexual relationship. For me, having sex was like masturbating with a live person, I know that sounds a little strange, but I basically equate solo sex with partner sex. Like you, I would fantasize about other things while engaging with my wife. No partner could ever compete with my porn fantasies. That's why porn was so damaging for me...it ruined relationships.
 

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
I think many of us have such a drawer in our past, real or metaphorical. A place where we experienced something that excited us but also made us feel dirty. Maybe a secret we kept from others, or even being abused ourselves. For me it all started when my step father molested my sisters and I knew about it but couldn't process it or stand up to him. It made me feel so guilty and then I was convinced I was sick like him when I started having my own sexual urges. Well, that's pretty dark compared to your drawer - but I think it's similar in some ways.
A lot of the acting out seems to be about processing (or not processing) various forms of trauma. And then the processing creates new trauma. I'm sorry to hear about your experiences. You are here, with your drawer open, which, I think, is a beautiful thing.
 

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
This process can be tough while maintaining a sexual relationship. For me, having sex was like masturbating with a live person, I know that sounds a little strange, but I basically equate solo sex with partner sex. Like you, I would fantasize about other things while engaging with my wife. No partner could ever compete with my porn fantasies. That's why porn was so damaging for me...it ruined relationships.
I know what you mean about masturbating with a live person. I actually told an ex-partner she was doing that a long time ago - little did I know then I was talking about myself. It's only very recently that I've been starting to look at the effect it's had on all my relationships.
 

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
Day 54

Things are going well on the no PMO front. My partner and I had sex again. This time I focused on her and didn't O myself. I also didn't fantasise about anything/one else. I don't know if I have every done that with her to be honest. Last year when she was pregnant we had a fairly active sex life but I was getting turned on by Reddit porn "confessions" first and then doing it. It is probably the most wholesome it has been in years.

Our baby is now in daycare, so I will have a lot more free time on my hands. The rainy season is here too, so I will have to be careful. I know that it's easy to forget the seriousness of the process, especially when things are going well. I do not currently miss porn, but it just takes listening to one bad piece of advice from my porn brain for everything to unravel.
 

GrateClips

Active Member
Day 54

Things are going well on the no PMO front. My partner and I had sex again. This time I focused on her and didn't O myself. I also didn't fantasise about anything/one else. I don't know if I have every done that with her to be honest. Last year when she was pregnant we had a fairly active sex life but I was getting turned on by Reddit porn "confessions" first and then doing it. It is probably the most wholesome it has been in years.

Our baby is now in daycare, so I will have a lot more free time on my hands. The rainy season is here too, so I will have to be careful. I know that it's easy to forget the seriousness of the process, especially when things are going well. I do not currently miss porn, but it just takes listening to one bad piece of advice from my porn brain for everything to unravel.

i would say the fact that you are focused on your partner and not someone else is a huge step in the right direction.

i too, and i bet many others here, have been guilty of fantasizing of someone else while in the midst of sex with a partner. A very close female friend of mine has done the same thing too with her first husband so i know it happens with women too. i know it makes me and probably others feel very guilty when this happens but i am trying to tell myself that i cannot change my past, only work on the present to affect the future.

i was struck by you and Simon's comments on the secret drawer. When I was in my teens I found an old sex positions book tucked away in a box at home. that became my first real PMO source of material.

I don't know if you have read the book "Out of the shadows" by Patrick Carnes -- it really is stunning in how it so accurately describes how sexual and porn addiction develops. Its often generational in nature.

anyways so glad you are writing here.
 

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
Day 56

I haven't journaled for just over day because of tiredness from being ill, and being very busy.

I have noticed that over the past month I have tried to take on too many "positive habits" in my life. This invariably has led to a state of entire collapse and the cessation of all good habits altogether in the past.

My dad would let problems grow and grow and then go for one glorious, heroic, and utterly miguided, attempt to cut them down in one swoop. This could have been the overgrown state of the back garden. Our next door neighbour, who had a great looking one, suggested that he take a lawnmower to it. But no, he had to do it the proper way. So the whole family is outside for 8 hours on a Sunday trying to pull up thick bramble roots. Of course the garden ended up even more overgrown. During a particular period of financial mismanagement, he invested all his kids' inheritance money (from a distant unknown rich relative) in a gamble based on some insider information from a friend, and lost it all overnight. It may have been the time when he tried to stop being abusive to my mum by using some new age book to make us all "eat with love" at the dinner table. That did not last long. Once when I was 16, visiting family in Hong Kong, he took me out for a beer, got drunk and then spent hours trying to get me to go to a topless hostess bar with him. I refused and told my mum when we got back. The next day he gave up alcohol out of shame. But when we returned home, he was, to my huge disappointment, back to drinking - and probably more than before.

During the last 6 months of life, dying of a brain tumour (and with an undiagnosed broken bone in his back), he refused to be moved into a care home, saying that his family should be looking after him instead. I had returned from university to do a shift taking care of him for a couple of weeks, and seeing how desperate the situation really appeared to be, organised a home doctor's checkup. I made sure it was at 7am so he would be asleep in bed. When I let the doctor in, he was suited up with a laptop, sitting at the dining room table ready for work. This was a man, who could not walk - who needed his arse wiped after the toilet. He must have dragged himself, in pain to the wardrobe in the bedroom, somehow dressed himself over what most have been many excrutiating hours of pain just so he could pretend that he was confronting a problem so that he didn't really have to deal with it. I remember the horror I felt when I turned on the dining room light that morning, expecting it to be empty. I also have some kind of twisted admiration for it too - it's the addict in you, driving you to new heights of resourcefulness and tenaciousness.

I have had many similar cycles of avoidance. Looking back at small journal snippets from over the years they all pretty much are related to the same thing. In a high state of anxiety and self-loathing because I am spending too much time on various addictions (porn, alcohol, cigarettes, weed, social media etc) and not being productive, and them some crazy scheme to sort everything out using willpower, which, it would seem, I do not have a lot of. One thing that has been helping me through this time is the book Atomic Habits, by James Clear. There is no heroic revolution, just slow and small evolution, and I have to make it as easy as possible for me to achieve those goals. So I am stripping back to reaching no PMO for 90 days (and cold showers for a year - currently on day 61). I am opening up the doors for other good habits in the future but these are my core.
 

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
i would say the fact that you are focused on your partner and not someone else is a huge step in the right direction.

i too, and i bet many others here, have been guilty of fantasizing of someone else while in the midst of sex with a partner. A very close female friend of mine has done the same thing too with her first husband so i know it happens with women too. i know it makes me and probably others feel very guilty when this happens but i am trying to tell myself that i cannot change my past, only work on the present to affect the future.

i was struck by you and Simon's comments on the secret drawer. When I was in my teens I found an old sex positions book tucked away in a box at home. that became my first real PMO source of material.

I don't know if you have read the book "Out of the shadows" by Patrick Carnes -- it really is stunning in how it so accurately describes how sexual and porn addiction develops. Its often generational in nature.

anyways so glad you are writing here.
Thank you for the kind words.

I haven't read the book, but I think I have seen it referenced elsewhere and will be sure to check it out. Without wanting to blame everything on family, I think it's important to understand why we have ended up where we have. Cheers for the suggestion.
 

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
I went to the park this afternoon with my partner and son. He swang on a swing for the first time and it was lovely. However, I think being around families has left me with a tight throat, chest and stomach; and acutely cognizant of some of my wrongdoings and their imprint on my soul. It has been 56 days since I hit rock bottom and the manner in which I did is weighing on me heavily. It is also bringing to mind a litany of other messed up things I have done over the years. The following is an account of some of the betrayals of trust and violations of privacy I have inflicted on others in my quest to get off over the years. It's graphic and distressing (so please proceed with caution if at all).

In my first year of university, I was visiting an old best friend of mine. He showed me some nude photos of his girlfriend at the time. Later on that night I went back upstairs and downloaded the pictures onto a disk. At some point I deleted them, knowing how messed up it was. In a strange and sad twist of fate, years later I saw the pictures online on a celebrity nudes site. She had become actress by then. I wondered whether I should get back in contact with him to let him know that there had been some unfortunate leak - maybe he had lost his computer or something. I even considered asking him whether he had posted them. Then I remembered what I had done years earlier resolved to keep out of it. I masturbated of course, and fortunately, when I looked for them again later, all trace of them had vanished.

When I was in my second year of university (around 2002), and in the first throes of internet porn addiction, a flatmate of my ex-girlfriend was caught having set up hidden cameras in each of the rooms of the female tenants so that he could get off. He had also stolen some of their personal files from their computers. My girlfriends was one of the victims. At the time I wanted to beat him up so badly. I was horrified by what he had done. I didn't know that someone could stoop so low, and he had seemed like such a nice guy. He said it was just his hormones that made him do it, but we all wondered how he could have such a blase excuse for such fucked up actions. The thing is, in the time that followed, although it felt murky and sickening, there was something inside me that was aroused by it, that wished I could have done what he did. The next year, when she had moved to a new flat, in the basement of the building where I lived, I ended up looking through one of her flatmate's laptops and getting off to some of their private material they had made. I did it in their room while everyone was out. Anyone could have come in at any moment and I would have been that guy (not that I was so much different). I think I probably did it more than once.

A few years later I was in Israel, staying at another girlfriend's place. We had an amazing sex life but I still spent hours jerking off to internet porn at her computer while she slept 3 feet away. One day I was flippantly looking through her folders on her computer while she was at work. At that time, I wasn't 100% sure why I was doing it - I just knew I shouldn't have been. I came across a picture of her giving someone a blowjob. I felt dizzy and hot, like I had just been punched. I masturbated to it. And still imagined it years later.

I even did it with my current partner. I searched through an external hard drive and found her nudes she had taken with exes and stole them and put them on my computer to get off to. I added her to my wank folder of people I knew. Just another female body to jerk off to. I deleted them almost immediately, then did it again, before deleting them a final time, because it seemed like a step too far, even for me. I had managed to block this out, due to the amount of alcohol I was consuming at the time. But this process has brought it up. I have told her just about everything that I have mentioned on this forum (including in this post) but I haven't told her this. Now I am considering how/when/if I should tell her.

These are the times that I remember right now. Perhaps I did it at other times and didn't find anything. Perhaps I have blocked things out. I wish I could say it wasn't me, but it was. I have been the kind of person that would do this. A slimy deviant coward. And there are people in my life who think that I am a good guy, and shouldn't beat myself up so much. I'm not quite sure how I can make up for my many sins, but I know that for the first time in my life, I really want to face myself and make the changes I need to make to become a better person, a worthy father, partner and be able to look in the mirror.
 

Aeodh Dan

Active Member
I think it's great that you are putting all of this into writing...
The story about your Dad is touching and made me think of mine who died 6 years ago and went crazy with dementia before he died, there was a lot of emotion that was repressed during his death and it has taken years for me to sort this out....my father was a sex addict also and he made sure that his son became one as well; my uncle, his brother, who is now dead also, moved to Bangkok so he could live out his sex fantasies with all of the whores there. Both of them died from complications from a lifelong habit of smoking cigarettes. So, sex addiction and porn addiction are a generational thing for me. What a legacy to hand down, eh?
Now I have two adult sons. I have been able to talk with both of them about porn, but I have not yet told them how much of an addiction it has been for me, but I know that I need to do this for their sake. Obviously there is some shame involved with such a confession to my sons, so it's been difficult to make that step...
As far as the wife/partner goes, my advice is to be careful about how much you share with her. I made the mistake of confessing to her that I had tried messing with her cousin many years ago while she was asleep in the same apartment, and that back fired in a bad way...it wasn't something that she needed to know, but my intention was pure; nevertheless I don't think she ever forgave for that. Some women are very understanding so it's different in every relationship, but they don't need to know everything in my opinion.
Finally, I would say that, yes, this is a slow process of consistent effort, even if it's just a small step every day. Again, the story about your Dad impressed me, because I have done the same so many times...I've had grand ideas about all the big changes I'm going to make and how those changes will transform my life and it's like one is always trying to discover some new shortcut in a sense, but it's about the small incremental things isn't it? It's about making it through THIS day right now, and if I can make it through TODAY, well then we'll see about tomorrow, won't we?
 

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
Thank you for sharing about your dad. It sounds like a lot of difficult things to process. I have started reading Out of the Shadows, as suggested by @GrateClips , and it has, only a few pages in, been illuminating about generational legacy.

I think you are right regarding not necessarily sharing everything. My partner has been very understanding in general. I don't think it's necessary for me to reveal everything right now, but take responsibility for the way I behave from here.

Let's make it through today PMO free!
 

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
Day 59

I took a day off journaling to recover from a bacterial infection which has left me run down and spending a lot more time in bed. This has led to more urges (although nothing too strong). I have started to watch crap on YouTube again and MO once per day due to boredom/anxiety even if I have had sex with my partner. I want to get this under control as I am feeling a bit further away from the reboot. But, things are going well at home in general. Out of the Shadows is a compelling and eye-opening read.

I was sent away to boarding school at 12. At some point not to long after that I learned to masturbate and saw my first porn mag. I quickly became a compulsive masturbater, doing it anywhere, anytime. To porn mags, a cheesy sex book I bought from a discount store called Amore Sotto Il Sole (this was 25 years ago, why do I remember that?), Sky Magazine, Loaded, FHM - any lad's mag; novels, films, catalogues. I even squeezed one out to a 5mm picture of someone in their underwear in a Reader's Digest in the school sanatorium while pretending to be sick. There were wank races in the dorms at night after lights out, I would win (although it turned out later I may have been the only one actually doing it). I wanked in every toilet, outside, in class, in the swimming pool. George Michael was a secret hero of mine. My nickname became "Toss", which handily rhymed with my surname. I had been caught a few times, but actually I was the one who spread a lot of the rumours about my habit, and also played it up too. During the school holidays I would stay up late into the night every night, scouring the TV for wank material. I did it into a cousin's underwear. I would fake being ill and spend the day wanking. I would wank until it hurt, until I had blisters, until nothing came out. I wanked 7 times in one day once.

At some point during my time at school, dial-up internet appeared in our lives. During the school holidays I would look at porn all day while my dad was at school, trying to access preview sites etc. Of course he found out. But strangely, although he was a very angry person, and was quick to punish, he never actually got angry about the porn. When I told him it was just a little bit, he just replied that it was some 'pretty hardcore stuff" over the course of a few days. A couple of years later, during another holiday, I heard my mum saying to my dad that he had to talk to me and he said he would when out for dinner with me. He mentioned it, but that was it. I was ready to tell him some incredible story about how someone had hacked into his computer and looked at it remotely (which I don't think was remotely possible).

When I was far too young, perhaps around 11 or 12, I had read JG Ballard's novel Crash, which was on my dad's bookshelf. It became a source of wank material during the holidays too.

When I bought my first computer from someone at university, it was in a spare room for a couple of days in the dorm. I had looked up some celebrity site. She checked on there and found out that someone had been looking at porn. She had a hard line on it, saying that it was cheating (something I couldn't even conceive of at that point) but that she would give me the benefit of the doubt and if I said that someone else had accessed it, she would believe me. Here started my career of lying about my porn use in earnest. From there it grew into something more shameful.

A couple of years later, bandwidth was bigger and file sharing sites were on the rise. My sexual apetites had become a lot more dirty and hardcore. My girlfriend mentioned to me that our sex was getting longer and longer and dirtier and dirtier. I was completely obsessed with anal. I wanted to put different objects inside her. I had also started to photograph her. I was downloading a lot of porn from Kazaa. At one point, curiosity got the better of me and I tried to download some bestiality video. The person I was downloading a horse porn video from stopped the download in order to call me a "sick fuck". Another day, one of my flatmates had burst in the door without knocking while I was at my computer with my pants round my ankles. I flusteredly told him to get out. The next day I went and told him that I wasn't looking at porn - but he hadn't actually cared. During this period I got some kind of spam message saying that the FBI knew what kind of material I was downloading with some kind of extortion. I walked around feeling sick for about 3 days, thinking I was going to be arrested and that my life was going to be over and I was going to be a sex offender arrested in public on the TV. I finally told one of my flatmates who laughed that it was a spam message. My girlfriend walked in on me looking at a celebrity topless picture on a Sunday morning and separated with me. I remember one of female flatmates being flabbergasted that I had been dumped just for that. I told her I didn't even look at porn though.

After I graduated I started a Master's degree and I was a night security guard at an office complex for a while. The previous guard had left a book behind called "A New Century of Sex Killers" behind, which I started reading, as I had not brought any entertainment for the first night. At some point I started to use it as material to get off with, and then started to do it at the desk. I noticed a strangely placed potted plant on top of a cabinet. Behind it was a hidden camera. I was let go not long after. During this time I was downloading and looking at sorority girl websites and "teeny" amateur girls everyday. I was also doing some night shifts at a local convenience store. A coworker told my flatmate (who also worked there) that he had seen my stealing a porn magazine one night. I had still been in a toxic on-and-off relationship with the same girlfriend during all that time and was lying about my porn use to her. There was a part of me that felt dirty and compulsive, but also a part of me that felt proud. At the time, I identified with Raskalnikov from Crime and Punishment, the Underground Man, any number of sick Roman Emperors from my degree, extreme Japanese films (such as Ichi the Killer etc). But this unhealthy addiction, smoking weed and the death of my father led me to dropping out of my Master's course.

I'm not sure where this is going, suffice to say that I have had a very long and unhealthy relationship with porn and masturbation, which has at different points in my life, had profoundly negative, and real, effects on my life and those around me. It has changed my personality and warped my tastes and I am really glad to be leaving it behind.
 
Last edited:

Aeodh Dan

Active Member
You are doing exactly what you should be doing...writing and expressing all this stuff is vital to recovery.
When we put it "on paper", we are able to distance ourselves from it a little more, we become "observers" in a sense, somewhat neutral perhaps to our own history.
In am discovering on these forums that my masturbation addiction is not unique and I thank you so very much for sharing this!
I am getting close to my initial 90 day "reboot", but I know that 90 days will not "cut it". No, this will be lifelong for me, a sobering thought...
 

PrometheusUnbound

Active Member
You are doing exactly what you should be doing...writing and expressing all this stuff is vital to recovery.
When we put it "on paper", we are able to distance ourselves from it a little more, we become "observers" in a sense, somewhat neutral perhaps to our own history.
In am discovering on these forums that my masturbation addiction is not unique and I thank you so very much for sharing this!
I am getting close to my
You are doing exactly what you should be doing...writing and expressing all this stuff is vital to recovery.
When we put it "on paper", we are able to distance ourselves from it a little more, we become "observers" in a sense, somewhat neutral perhaps to our own history.
In am discovering on these forums that my masturbation addiction is not unique and I thank you so very much for sharing this!
I am getting close to my initial 90 day "reboot", but I know that 90 days will not "cut it". No, this will be lifelong for me, a sobering thought...
I have never strung everything together before. The more that I do, the more I see the shape of the problems I have had and haven't been able to face. And it is helping me to distance myself and observe. I'm glad to be on the path with you.
I, too, will not be relaxing at 90 days. My problem is much deeper. And I know it's a lifelong quest.
 
Top