Hello everyone, you can call me Metaphy. As you all can probably guess, I'm here because I'm addicted to porn. It seems so crazy for me to think that but it's true.
So here's my story.
I'm 24, 25 next month, and I'm from the Caribbean but currently reside in the UK to attend university in which I'm in my final year of. I've watched porn from since I was a little child, often sneaking peaks at soft-core cable porn on Showtime and Cinemax as a child but it wasn't til I was about 13 that I started masturbating to it when I got Kazaa on my computer which resulted in me downloading loads of it. Thankfully I went through about a year without a computer so that prevented me from watching excessive amounts however I did masturbate everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. I'd often come home from school and knock out an orgasm and always before bed. Some Saturdays, when my mother and aunt would go out to do various things, I'd go to my aunts house who had pirated Dish and as a result had the adult channels open (yes Pirates of the Caribbean is very much alive in this day lol) At some point my family got back a computer, when I was about 15. From there my porn usage rose to multiple times a day and that carried on for ages. At 17, I lost my virginity with my girlfriend at the time, a big moment for any teenage boy. You know how the say your first time is over way too quickly? That wasn't the case with mine, it turned out that I never actually came my first time. In fact, it wasn't till about the 3rd or 4th time that I managed to ejaculate with her. This didn't really concern me cause it made me feel like a stud to know that I could go for so long. What did concern me however, if only little bit, was the fact that I had little feeling in my penis. I didn't know how it was supposed to feel, but I knew it ought to be more than what I was experiencing else I'd truly have to wonder why people were so entranced by sex. To be honest with you, I never had much feeling with any of my partners and if they asked me I'd often lie and tell them how amazing they felt, now this is something I've never told anyone before. Sex, has never felt heavenly amazing to me. The feeling was better with some girls than with others and that includes oral but it never felt like it ought to. Despite this, I carried on with masturbation/porn habits despite this, though I think intuitively I knew the two things were related. It wasn't till about 18 or 19 though that I had confirmation when I learnt that it was due to excessive masturbation and my death grip style of masturbating. I then resolved to try and stop for a month or so to give myself a chance to heal back but I never got very far with it and ended figuring to cut-back would be just as well (though that often didn't go as planned either). I think I was worried that if my sensitivity came back I'd no longer be able last long in bed. I didn't want to become a ?1-minute man?. To me, sex was much more about giving and if I couldn't last long I wouldn't be able to pleasure my partners, because to be good in bed meant you had to have a massive penis and be able to fuck non-stop for ages, you know, like a pornstar. I wonder where I got that idea from....?
At 20, I moved to England for university. The first time on my on, independent with my own room and my own laptop. You can have a guess at how I spent a lot of my time. That's right, watching porn. It wasn't the only thing I did. I had friends and I hung out with them a lot and went out and so forth but I was watching porn multiple times per day. Fortunately, in my 2nd month I'd gotten a girlfriend and we practically moved right in with each other (in hindsight that was not the wisest of things) but it did stop me from watching a lot of porn. I only watched maybe 2 times a week. During this time, feeling gradually got better with her than with anyone prior most obviously due to the reduction of masturbating and porn usage. Still though I don't quite think the feeling was where it ought to be, there was still a degree of numbness to it. My 2nd year came and it turned out that I would have to transfer to another university in another city, we decided we'd try to make things work long distance. We'd mostly only have sex on the weekends when we'd visit each other, so as result my porn usage went back up to multiple times per day. Sure enough, my sensitivity dulled again and I began to lose feeling with her. Eventually we broke up in 2012, which when I think about it now should have happened a lot sooner.
Now, 2012 became a sort of turning point for me. That year one of my best friends, whom I've had feelings for for years but circumstances always seemed to keep us from getting involved, joined me at university and I felt like this was our moment. It turned out she just wanted to be friends, which admittedly was kind of crushing for me. But I figured maybe it was a good thing, considering I hadn't been single almost my entire time of university up to that point. I figured I'd put the unrequited love behind me and make the use of the time to grow as a person. The past 2 years has had ups and downs, my growth that I set for has been staggered, I won't go into it but it hasn't been as well as I'd hoped and I found myself some depressive sates at times. My best friend and I have grown closer than we've ever been and that's made things a bit but I've managed to keep myself strong in that regard. However, what has maintained through this period has been my porn usage and for these past 2 years its been at its highest, with being single and sporadic hookups I've kept my sexual desires satisfied with porn. I figured I just had a high sex drive and this just was normal for me to satisfy it, though now as I write this I note that my high sex drive never was intense with real women. I noticed them of course and would remark about how attractive they were, but you'd think with how I was masturbating that a mere glance at an attractive woman should have set me into overdrive. At some point last year I came across various articles on the ills of porn usage, all leading back to yourbrainonporn.com. It moved me somewhat, I didn't think I was addicted cause by definition addiction is something that is negatively affecting how you function within the world. I wasn't having to leave lectures to knock out an orgasm in the bathroom, so I couldn't be addicted but I thought it couldn't hurt to give myself a break. So I tried it. For like a week. I'd break down, ?well masturbation is healthy for you, it's normal? and this happened a few times through out the year. It still wasn't apparent to me that I had a problem.
Well it turned out that my best friend had to drop out of uni this year, due to various reasons. It was a bit sad to separate but it's life, plus I'd be back home at the end of the academic year anyway. Plus, I thought time apart couldn?t hurt anyway. She came back with me to collect her stuff and she left in the beginning of October. At this point, I don't have a lot of friends left at university. A lot of them were in higher years than me and have since graduated, others I've fallen out with. So I've been alone for the most part these past 2 months, occasionally hanging out with my housemate and one of our friends who I actually met through my best friend. What I noticed in these past 2 months, was how much I was masturbating. It was a lot. It's crazy to think one person can masturbate can do it so much. I'm talking, maybe 10 times a day. Wake up, porn. Come home from class, porn. Have dinner (tea for you English people), porn. Take a break from coursework, porn. Go to bed, porn. Can't sleep, porn. I think you see the trend. At the beginning of November I began to try to masturbate without porn, I couldn't even get it up. Never had that problem before, despite all my sensitivity issues, not once did I ever have a problem getting an erection. This no doubt, weighed heavily on my mind. I was sure I wasn't addicted though, I still wasn't running to the bathroom during class to knock one out. But I really start to wonder if I was doing it too much. Hanging out with my friends that I mentioned before, and somehow we ended up talking about the movie Don Jon. I had seen ads for it and knew what it was about, but it never interested me that much. But it really put the thought of me having a problem in my mind. I went back to yourbrainonporn.com read stuff, like actually read stuff to try and understand it not just read it as a piece of interesting info.
It shook me a bit to learn some of the things that were being reported by Nofappers . Not just the sexual ailments but also the mental side effects. I'd have these depressive bouts throughout the past 2 years, lack of confidence even despite the ?fake it to make it? attempts, anxiety issues, lack of motivation. The sexual side shocked me too, I thought my issues just stemmed from masturbation but to learn that it was more than that, that porn was literally reshaping my brain was major. So I watched Don Jon and after decided that I'd give a real hard attempt to go 30 days porn and masturbation free. That was the 14th of November, I made it a week and 4 days. What became apparent to me that week, was that I was most definitely had a problem. On day 4 I was scrolling, through my bookmarks looking for something to do with my time since I wasn't masturbating (it also became apparent to me most of the masturbation these past two months, stemmed from boredom, I mostly masturbated simply because I could) I came across a bookmark of a video that I had missed when deleting the others and it was a fight to keep from watching that video. It was a fight to get myself to delete it. I realized from that point I had a problem. I resisted and got rid of it. But on day 11, I relapsed and that video was the first I watched. I figured hey this is just a slip up, I'll get back on the horse. I realized though that December was right around the corner. Now, this may be a bit OCD of me but it kind of nags me when things are not done in line with the time of day, week, month etc. It's one of the problems I have with working out, I get motivated to work out but if it's say Wednesday, I'll postpone it to Monday instead of starting right then and there so my work out plan will be perfectly planned throughout the week. That may be an excuse, but it's something I'm always doing. So I thought ?Hey, why not just wait to stop on the first, I'll make my official start date 12:00 December 1st ? So I continued to binge for the remainder the past week. Till December 1st from 12:00am to 10:00am. Then I said, ?Well it can be 12:00pm December 1st ? I made it 1:00pm December 2nd , 25 hours. Yesterday, I made the decision that I was going to beat this thing. 12:00 December 3rd would be my starting point to 30 days of no porn, the first step to getting this out of my system. Yea, it's midweek and that nags me a bit, but that's my addiction's fault and that's just another indication to beat it, I won't let that be another reason to relapse.
Today went well enough. I kept myself busy by cleaning and going into town to run errands. I stopped at Krispy Kreme and treated myself to doughnuts and coffee and tried to relax a little. At first it helped, but slowly for no apparent reason I began to slip into another anxiety attack. My throat and chest began to feel tight, I came home and began to write this. Since unloading all of this I've calmed down. I've never felt so anxious in my life, never felt like this before. Now, maybe this goes beyond the porn, but for damn sure the use of it isn't helping. I really need to beat this, I'm actually sacred of what will happen if I don't. I'm scared about a lot of things it seems like. But I really need to feel like a normal human being and by all indications this seems like as good a place as any to start. Over the course of the past 2 yeas I've felt like my growth has gone no where, porn maybe one the reasons why, so now it's time to find out.
30 days to start out with. This is Day 1.
I realize that this is a really long post, I apologize for that. I really didn't intend to make it this long but as I wrote it all just kind of poured out of me. If you've made it this far, I just want to say thank you.
So here's my story.
I'm 24, 25 next month, and I'm from the Caribbean but currently reside in the UK to attend university in which I'm in my final year of. I've watched porn from since I was a little child, often sneaking peaks at soft-core cable porn on Showtime and Cinemax as a child but it wasn't til I was about 13 that I started masturbating to it when I got Kazaa on my computer which resulted in me downloading loads of it. Thankfully I went through about a year without a computer so that prevented me from watching excessive amounts however I did masturbate everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. I'd often come home from school and knock out an orgasm and always before bed. Some Saturdays, when my mother and aunt would go out to do various things, I'd go to my aunts house who had pirated Dish and as a result had the adult channels open (yes Pirates of the Caribbean is very much alive in this day lol) At some point my family got back a computer, when I was about 15. From there my porn usage rose to multiple times a day and that carried on for ages. At 17, I lost my virginity with my girlfriend at the time, a big moment for any teenage boy. You know how the say your first time is over way too quickly? That wasn't the case with mine, it turned out that I never actually came my first time. In fact, it wasn't till about the 3rd or 4th time that I managed to ejaculate with her. This didn't really concern me cause it made me feel like a stud to know that I could go for so long. What did concern me however, if only little bit, was the fact that I had little feeling in my penis. I didn't know how it was supposed to feel, but I knew it ought to be more than what I was experiencing else I'd truly have to wonder why people were so entranced by sex. To be honest with you, I never had much feeling with any of my partners and if they asked me I'd often lie and tell them how amazing they felt, now this is something I've never told anyone before. Sex, has never felt heavenly amazing to me. The feeling was better with some girls than with others and that includes oral but it never felt like it ought to. Despite this, I carried on with masturbation/porn habits despite this, though I think intuitively I knew the two things were related. It wasn't till about 18 or 19 though that I had confirmation when I learnt that it was due to excessive masturbation and my death grip style of masturbating. I then resolved to try and stop for a month or so to give myself a chance to heal back but I never got very far with it and ended figuring to cut-back would be just as well (though that often didn't go as planned either). I think I was worried that if my sensitivity came back I'd no longer be able last long in bed. I didn't want to become a ?1-minute man?. To me, sex was much more about giving and if I couldn't last long I wouldn't be able to pleasure my partners, because to be good in bed meant you had to have a massive penis and be able to fuck non-stop for ages, you know, like a pornstar. I wonder where I got that idea from....?
At 20, I moved to England for university. The first time on my on, independent with my own room and my own laptop. You can have a guess at how I spent a lot of my time. That's right, watching porn. It wasn't the only thing I did. I had friends and I hung out with them a lot and went out and so forth but I was watching porn multiple times per day. Fortunately, in my 2nd month I'd gotten a girlfriend and we practically moved right in with each other (in hindsight that was not the wisest of things) but it did stop me from watching a lot of porn. I only watched maybe 2 times a week. During this time, feeling gradually got better with her than with anyone prior most obviously due to the reduction of masturbating and porn usage. Still though I don't quite think the feeling was where it ought to be, there was still a degree of numbness to it. My 2nd year came and it turned out that I would have to transfer to another university in another city, we decided we'd try to make things work long distance. We'd mostly only have sex on the weekends when we'd visit each other, so as result my porn usage went back up to multiple times per day. Sure enough, my sensitivity dulled again and I began to lose feeling with her. Eventually we broke up in 2012, which when I think about it now should have happened a lot sooner.
Now, 2012 became a sort of turning point for me. That year one of my best friends, whom I've had feelings for for years but circumstances always seemed to keep us from getting involved, joined me at university and I felt like this was our moment. It turned out she just wanted to be friends, which admittedly was kind of crushing for me. But I figured maybe it was a good thing, considering I hadn't been single almost my entire time of university up to that point. I figured I'd put the unrequited love behind me and make the use of the time to grow as a person. The past 2 years has had ups and downs, my growth that I set for has been staggered, I won't go into it but it hasn't been as well as I'd hoped and I found myself some depressive sates at times. My best friend and I have grown closer than we've ever been and that's made things a bit but I've managed to keep myself strong in that regard. However, what has maintained through this period has been my porn usage and for these past 2 years its been at its highest, with being single and sporadic hookups I've kept my sexual desires satisfied with porn. I figured I just had a high sex drive and this just was normal for me to satisfy it, though now as I write this I note that my high sex drive never was intense with real women. I noticed them of course and would remark about how attractive they were, but you'd think with how I was masturbating that a mere glance at an attractive woman should have set me into overdrive. At some point last year I came across various articles on the ills of porn usage, all leading back to yourbrainonporn.com. It moved me somewhat, I didn't think I was addicted cause by definition addiction is something that is negatively affecting how you function within the world. I wasn't having to leave lectures to knock out an orgasm in the bathroom, so I couldn't be addicted but I thought it couldn't hurt to give myself a break. So I tried it. For like a week. I'd break down, ?well masturbation is healthy for you, it's normal? and this happened a few times through out the year. It still wasn't apparent to me that I had a problem.
Well it turned out that my best friend had to drop out of uni this year, due to various reasons. It was a bit sad to separate but it's life, plus I'd be back home at the end of the academic year anyway. Plus, I thought time apart couldn?t hurt anyway. She came back with me to collect her stuff and she left in the beginning of October. At this point, I don't have a lot of friends left at university. A lot of them were in higher years than me and have since graduated, others I've fallen out with. So I've been alone for the most part these past 2 months, occasionally hanging out with my housemate and one of our friends who I actually met through my best friend. What I noticed in these past 2 months, was how much I was masturbating. It was a lot. It's crazy to think one person can masturbate can do it so much. I'm talking, maybe 10 times a day. Wake up, porn. Come home from class, porn. Have dinner (tea for you English people), porn. Take a break from coursework, porn. Go to bed, porn. Can't sleep, porn. I think you see the trend. At the beginning of November I began to try to masturbate without porn, I couldn't even get it up. Never had that problem before, despite all my sensitivity issues, not once did I ever have a problem getting an erection. This no doubt, weighed heavily on my mind. I was sure I wasn't addicted though, I still wasn't running to the bathroom during class to knock one out. But I really start to wonder if I was doing it too much. Hanging out with my friends that I mentioned before, and somehow we ended up talking about the movie Don Jon. I had seen ads for it and knew what it was about, but it never interested me that much. But it really put the thought of me having a problem in my mind. I went back to yourbrainonporn.com read stuff, like actually read stuff to try and understand it not just read it as a piece of interesting info.
It shook me a bit to learn some of the things that were being reported by Nofappers . Not just the sexual ailments but also the mental side effects. I'd have these depressive bouts throughout the past 2 years, lack of confidence even despite the ?fake it to make it? attempts, anxiety issues, lack of motivation. The sexual side shocked me too, I thought my issues just stemmed from masturbation but to learn that it was more than that, that porn was literally reshaping my brain was major. So I watched Don Jon and after decided that I'd give a real hard attempt to go 30 days porn and masturbation free. That was the 14th of November, I made it a week and 4 days. What became apparent to me that week, was that I was most definitely had a problem. On day 4 I was scrolling, through my bookmarks looking for something to do with my time since I wasn't masturbating (it also became apparent to me most of the masturbation these past two months, stemmed from boredom, I mostly masturbated simply because I could) I came across a bookmark of a video that I had missed when deleting the others and it was a fight to keep from watching that video. It was a fight to get myself to delete it. I realized from that point I had a problem. I resisted and got rid of it. But on day 11, I relapsed and that video was the first I watched. I figured hey this is just a slip up, I'll get back on the horse. I realized though that December was right around the corner. Now, this may be a bit OCD of me but it kind of nags me when things are not done in line with the time of day, week, month etc. It's one of the problems I have with working out, I get motivated to work out but if it's say Wednesday, I'll postpone it to Monday instead of starting right then and there so my work out plan will be perfectly planned throughout the week. That may be an excuse, but it's something I'm always doing. So I thought ?Hey, why not just wait to stop on the first, I'll make my official start date 12:00 December 1st ? So I continued to binge for the remainder the past week. Till December 1st from 12:00am to 10:00am. Then I said, ?Well it can be 12:00pm December 1st ? I made it 1:00pm December 2nd , 25 hours. Yesterday, I made the decision that I was going to beat this thing. 12:00 December 3rd would be my starting point to 30 days of no porn, the first step to getting this out of my system. Yea, it's midweek and that nags me a bit, but that's my addiction's fault and that's just another indication to beat it, I won't let that be another reason to relapse.
Today went well enough. I kept myself busy by cleaning and going into town to run errands. I stopped at Krispy Kreme and treated myself to doughnuts and coffee and tried to relax a little. At first it helped, but slowly for no apparent reason I began to slip into another anxiety attack. My throat and chest began to feel tight, I came home and began to write this. Since unloading all of this I've calmed down. I've never felt so anxious in my life, never felt like this before. Now, maybe this goes beyond the porn, but for damn sure the use of it isn't helping. I really need to beat this, I'm actually sacred of what will happen if I don't. I'm scared about a lot of things it seems like. But I really need to feel like a normal human being and by all indications this seems like as good a place as any to start. Over the course of the past 2 yeas I've felt like my growth has gone no where, porn maybe one the reasons why, so now it's time to find out.
30 days to start out with. This is Day 1.
I realize that this is a really long post, I apologize for that. I really didn't intend to make it this long but as I wrote it all just kind of poured out of me. If you've made it this far, I just want to say thank you.