I just turned 22. I've been watching porn since I was 13 or 14 but never considered myself "addicted". If I had to think back I've probably had ED issues for 4-5 years without realizing it was from porn. Depression runs in my family and I figured the depression was what caused the ED, not that it was a symptom of some other issuee. I've been trying to deal with the depression for about four years now, not realizing I wasn't addressing the root cause of the problem. It never occurred to me that porn could do the things to your brain that I now know it can.
I remember in middle school and early in high school being generally pretty happy and finding a good deal of joy in going about the day-to-day; hanging out with friends, meeting new people, drumming, playing the piano, playing catch with my dad, cooking and eating weird food, whatever. I've since felt that nothing in my experience is as clear or vivid as I remember it. I have trouble concentrating, reading and trying to learn new things. I feel I can't have a complex thought, the more deep thoughts tend to come and go very quickly before I can begin to articulate them. Things that used to make me happy hardly do anything for me now. Since getting to college I've also had significant problems with anxiety, especially in social situations. I started taking sertraline (50mg initially then up to 200mg at its peak) and was even on strattera for a little bit but have always had problems while on them. I've now weaned myself off the sertraline for the second time and have been off it since the end of September 2013.
I've tried to combat the problem through more holistic changes to my lifestyle. I've been a pretty staunch vegan for the past three years and eat very healthily, take vitamins and some natural supplements (macca, ginkgo baloba, L-Tryptophan) but haven't noticed any significant changes to my mood. I like being vegan in that it's helped me with self-discipline and self-determination in some areas, but it's also sometimes isolating and has made me more bitter towards the general meat-eating population. Besides diet, I've been running consistently the past four years in college and started lifting more regularly at the beginning of this year. Physically, I'm in the best shape of my life. Long-time friends, male and female, often comment on how healthy I've become. I now have a bit of a reputation for being a health freak, but no matter how extreme I've gotten it hasn't made much of a difference to my mood, which is hard to talk about and makes being with someone difficult and more complicated than it should be at this point in my life.
I've never had a significant relationship or even much experience with women. I was with a girl for a little bit senior year in high school. She was beautiful and pretty cool but I couldn't have sex with her. It was easy hanging out together in a group but spending time alone with her was awkward and always made me sad. Since coming to college I've been with a couple girls but have only really had what I'd consider sex like one time - maybe one and a half - and it was in Paris and I was wasted, so there were definitely some extraordinary circumstances. All in all, I've "failed to perform" on a number of occasions with at least five different girls that I'm physically, if not emotionally, attracted to. As I said, I thought it was because of my anxiety/depression.
A little over a month ago, I watched a Gary Wilson's TED talk, "The Great Porn Experiment" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU). It seemed like he was describing exactly what I've been going through and the changes I've been hoping to make. Since then I've not watched porn or masturbated for over 3 weeks (23 days now) and it's terrible. I'd been feeling pretty alright off medication but now I'm really feeling the flatline, physically and emotionally. I'm about to graduate college in ten days and the timing for this revelation and experiment is very inconvenient and awful. Regardless, I'm going to stick with it and ride it out. I have no desire to watch porn anymore, the thought of it alone is upsetting. I want, more than almost anything in the world, to be in a meaningful relationship with someone I really like and care about and it's frustrating every day that I can't make steps in that direction. I start what promises to be a pretty cool job in Shanghai at the end of august and really hope all of this is behind me by then. I hope I start to feel better as the summer progresses and I feel ready come August.
Has anyone had a similar experience so far? Can anyone give me advice on how to speed up the reboot or make it less bad?
I remember in middle school and early in high school being generally pretty happy and finding a good deal of joy in going about the day-to-day; hanging out with friends, meeting new people, drumming, playing the piano, playing catch with my dad, cooking and eating weird food, whatever. I've since felt that nothing in my experience is as clear or vivid as I remember it. I have trouble concentrating, reading and trying to learn new things. I feel I can't have a complex thought, the more deep thoughts tend to come and go very quickly before I can begin to articulate them. Things that used to make me happy hardly do anything for me now. Since getting to college I've also had significant problems with anxiety, especially in social situations. I started taking sertraline (50mg initially then up to 200mg at its peak) and was even on strattera for a little bit but have always had problems while on them. I've now weaned myself off the sertraline for the second time and have been off it since the end of September 2013.
I've tried to combat the problem through more holistic changes to my lifestyle. I've been a pretty staunch vegan for the past three years and eat very healthily, take vitamins and some natural supplements (macca, ginkgo baloba, L-Tryptophan) but haven't noticed any significant changes to my mood. I like being vegan in that it's helped me with self-discipline and self-determination in some areas, but it's also sometimes isolating and has made me more bitter towards the general meat-eating population. Besides diet, I've been running consistently the past four years in college and started lifting more regularly at the beginning of this year. Physically, I'm in the best shape of my life. Long-time friends, male and female, often comment on how healthy I've become. I now have a bit of a reputation for being a health freak, but no matter how extreme I've gotten it hasn't made much of a difference to my mood, which is hard to talk about and makes being with someone difficult and more complicated than it should be at this point in my life.
I've never had a significant relationship or even much experience with women. I was with a girl for a little bit senior year in high school. She was beautiful and pretty cool but I couldn't have sex with her. It was easy hanging out together in a group but spending time alone with her was awkward and always made me sad. Since coming to college I've been with a couple girls but have only really had what I'd consider sex like one time - maybe one and a half - and it was in Paris and I was wasted, so there were definitely some extraordinary circumstances. All in all, I've "failed to perform" on a number of occasions with at least five different girls that I'm physically, if not emotionally, attracted to. As I said, I thought it was because of my anxiety/depression.
A little over a month ago, I watched a Gary Wilson's TED talk, "The Great Porn Experiment" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU). It seemed like he was describing exactly what I've been going through and the changes I've been hoping to make. Since then I've not watched porn or masturbated for over 3 weeks (23 days now) and it's terrible. I'd been feeling pretty alright off medication but now I'm really feeling the flatline, physically and emotionally. I'm about to graduate college in ten days and the timing for this revelation and experiment is very inconvenient and awful. Regardless, I'm going to stick with it and ride it out. I have no desire to watch porn anymore, the thought of it alone is upsetting. I want, more than almost anything in the world, to be in a meaningful relationship with someone I really like and care about and it's frustrating every day that I can't make steps in that direction. I start what promises to be a pretty cool job in Shanghai at the end of august and really hope all of this is behind me by then. I hope I start to feel better as the summer progresses and I feel ready come August.
Has anyone had a similar experience so far? Can anyone give me advice on how to speed up the reboot or make it less bad?
