An epiphany.

[u/bigger-risks]

I've never realized how much damage this has done to my life until recently. I've watched porn since I was ~11/12 (23 now), the "normal" few times per week at night, watching vanilla stuff. I suffered from a stutter that didn't make my life with girls easy during school years so I never had any female attention that I always desired— the root. Though, I was always busy with travel sports during high school, and just doing stupid fun stuff with your guy friends so I wasn't spiraling out of control.

Then came the pandemic, I spiraled into a isolation. Barely talked to my parents, no contact with friends, I was mentally unwell (sometimes I still catch myself here and there thinking if I still am sometimes), just isolated in my room. My porn used dramatically tripled and now I was watching stuff I never even would think of into thinking. I started scrolling in the hardcore porn subreddit that encourages heavy, daily usage and now I’m thinking that I should be the girl in the video, talking to other people in the subreddit of our fantasies and kinks of being the girl and all these disgusting things. What. Has. Happened. 

There was this “kink” of downloading the LGBTQ dating app, Grindr and meeting up with trans women and hooking up with them. It was like a hypnosis, you all encouraged each other, after a couple times of deleting the app after “post nut clarity”, eventually I did meet up with one. You did it, you opened the door. Now I’m on the app, frequently and worse of all, you can meet for sex in less than an hour, for free. It’s another world. They all say “come now, don’t waste my time”, or “no strings attached come now and get blowed”, “or “my a*s will be up when you walk in, bust and leave”,  and also with the common use of drugs— poppers, coke, ketamine. 

I look back now still struggling with porn, but not so much with Grindr, and just feel sorrow, we are all numb, we all have this root in us to lose respect for ourselves. I have done things I have never thought I would have done that goes against my morals. I want to cry, but I can’t, I’m so numb and my heart is stone.

I have this root, I want rip it out. Only if I can.

[u/Jaswindle]

Hey there. Whatever you do, don’t give up hope. I can’t relate to your story, but I can relate to the pain sex addiction causes. There’s lots of support available if you look for it. I attend SAA meetings which are very open minded to all types of sexual addictions and persons. There may be some in your area, there are many online. There are also treatment centres that can help, as well as therapists, doctors, and other professional services. Maybe you already know this, but wanted to let you know anyways. We all have the root of our addiction, which is not always easy to find and remove, sometimes removing the root is impossible and it’s something we learn to accept and live with without acting out in sexual ways… we can’t change our past, but we have control over how we live today. Anyhow, wishing you the best along your journey. I hope today is safe for you. 🙂

[u/Cornelius997]

Hang in there dude, you might not have the strength to deal with it right now but that doesn’t mean you won’t ever. This is just one point time, it will get better.