Hello! Here I am sharing my story of porn addiction and keeping a journal of my experience in trying no fap for 90 days. Hopefully you will resonate with parts of my story and can gain some inspiration as I progress.
First things first, a bit of background. I was first exposed to internet pornography in the days of 56k dial-up internet (those tiny images, loading... ever... so... slowly...!). As a young teenager with hormones raging the thrill of seeing my first completely naked lady was unparalleled. However, my first computer belonged to the whole family so rather than browse there I much preferred staying up late and watching the adult previews on sky and hunting for the occasional naked body after hours on sky TV.
However, times moved on, things changed. The internet got faster, I got my own private PC and hard-disk storage increased. I didn't really start keeping a stash of pornography to myself until about 10 years ago. Safe to say that over the years frequency that I used porn to enhance my mood spiked massively. Porn was more readily available, it was more explicit, and higher quality than ever before! I would lose hours alone with myself. Sometimes spending half the night binge-watching and going to work bleary eyed in the morning. During this time I was also hoarding many, many gigabytes of porn.
In some ways I was in love with porn. The problem for me is it's just too good. I started with picture perfect porn stars but they got boring very quickly. Suddenly the more average girl next door type of professional porn became more interesting. Then I quickly discovered porn forums which introduced me to amateur porn which took it to a whole new level of excitement. Then I moved onto revenge / leaked porn.
I was often astonished at my own ability to mentally index my favourite parts of porn. For example I could remember exactly which folders housed my favourite images / videos amongst the unorganised haystack of material I had stored. I could be browsing a forum and recognise which girls I already had images / videos of. On reflection I can't help but feel this was a huge waste of my mental resources and has possibly eroded my mental capacity to remember more important things in life.
Gradually I noticed that I was viewing more and more explicit material just to get the same buzz. I also noticed I got very very picky in what I would allow myself to get-off to. I also couldn't just be happy with the collection I had. I was always craving more and more extreme stuff. Increasingly it wasn't about me being attracted to the girl on-screen. Instead, I judged the quality of the porn by how filthy, dirty, extreme, depraved and/or gross what I saw in front of me was. At this point I could really feel myself getting hooked and not in a good way. I truly believe the chemical explanation of the dopamine addiction cycle. The trouble is there's always something more filthy out there to find. But recently the time and energy needed to find it (and hide it) wasn't sustainable for me.
I was literally using porn as my motivator for everything and means to escape the discomfort in my life. For example I would wake up, not wanting to go to work and the only thing that would motivate me to get out of bed was the thought of PMOing before I went t work. At work all I could think of was what time I could escape to get home and PMO again. I avoided going out to meet friends and girls because I spend to much time with porn instead of interacting with real human beings. My social skills are now behind where I want them to be.
During my worst periods I used several times a day and would become a hermit, shortening any social interactions to the bare minimum to get what I needed from people and then leave to peruse porn. The real turning point for me was that I've just hit 30 and my erection strength is suffering with real-women. In real-life situations with girls I know I should be more turned on than I actually am and unfortunately my erection quality reflects this. I hit breaking point recently when two different girls commented that I wasn't very hard. I secretly knew this but having them confirm it just made me feel very sad. I'm not a religious man but I'm praying that I haven't physically damaged myself for good by excessive fapping.
So here I am, 4 days into my 90 day journey. Hoping I can regain my erection quality, make more productive use of my time and hopefully show people the evils of pornography.
P.S. As mentioned in the title I am based in London, England so if anyone wants a local accountability partner or just to meetup and chat about this I'm willing.
First things first, a bit of background. I was first exposed to internet pornography in the days of 56k dial-up internet (those tiny images, loading... ever... so... slowly...!). As a young teenager with hormones raging the thrill of seeing my first completely naked lady was unparalleled. However, my first computer belonged to the whole family so rather than browse there I much preferred staying up late and watching the adult previews on sky and hunting for the occasional naked body after hours on sky TV.
However, times moved on, things changed. The internet got faster, I got my own private PC and hard-disk storage increased. I didn't really start keeping a stash of pornography to myself until about 10 years ago. Safe to say that over the years frequency that I used porn to enhance my mood spiked massively. Porn was more readily available, it was more explicit, and higher quality than ever before! I would lose hours alone with myself. Sometimes spending half the night binge-watching and going to work bleary eyed in the morning. During this time I was also hoarding many, many gigabytes of porn.
In some ways I was in love with porn. The problem for me is it's just too good. I started with picture perfect porn stars but they got boring very quickly. Suddenly the more average girl next door type of professional porn became more interesting. Then I quickly discovered porn forums which introduced me to amateur porn which took it to a whole new level of excitement. Then I moved onto revenge / leaked porn.
I was often astonished at my own ability to mentally index my favourite parts of porn. For example I could remember exactly which folders housed my favourite images / videos amongst the unorganised haystack of material I had stored. I could be browsing a forum and recognise which girls I already had images / videos of. On reflection I can't help but feel this was a huge waste of my mental resources and has possibly eroded my mental capacity to remember more important things in life.
Gradually I noticed that I was viewing more and more explicit material just to get the same buzz. I also noticed I got very very picky in what I would allow myself to get-off to. I also couldn't just be happy with the collection I had. I was always craving more and more extreme stuff. Increasingly it wasn't about me being attracted to the girl on-screen. Instead, I judged the quality of the porn by how filthy, dirty, extreme, depraved and/or gross what I saw in front of me was. At this point I could really feel myself getting hooked and not in a good way. I truly believe the chemical explanation of the dopamine addiction cycle. The trouble is there's always something more filthy out there to find. But recently the time and energy needed to find it (and hide it) wasn't sustainable for me.
I was literally using porn as my motivator for everything and means to escape the discomfort in my life. For example I would wake up, not wanting to go to work and the only thing that would motivate me to get out of bed was the thought of PMOing before I went t work. At work all I could think of was what time I could escape to get home and PMO again. I avoided going out to meet friends and girls because I spend to much time with porn instead of interacting with real human beings. My social skills are now behind where I want them to be.
During my worst periods I used several times a day and would become a hermit, shortening any social interactions to the bare minimum to get what I needed from people and then leave to peruse porn. The real turning point for me was that I've just hit 30 and my erection strength is suffering with real-women. In real-life situations with girls I know I should be more turned on than I actually am and unfortunately my erection quality reflects this. I hit breaking point recently when two different girls commented that I wasn't very hard. I secretly knew this but having them confirm it just made me feel very sad. I'm not a religious man but I'm praying that I haven't physically damaged myself for good by excessive fapping.
So here I am, 4 days into my 90 day journey. Hoping I can regain my erection quality, make more productive use of my time and hopefully show people the evils of pornography.
P.S. As mentioned in the title I am based in London, England so if anyone wants a local accountability partner or just to meetup and chat about this I'm willing.
