I think there are a lot of people like you, just as there are a lot of alcohol drinkers who are not alcoholics, and a lot of people who can smoke one cigarette a day and not become chain smokers.
There are also a lot of people with a vastly different experience with internet porn. Since we’re sharing personal anecdotes, allow me to describe my experience. I’ve first encountered internet porn in my teenage years. A harmless habit eventually escalated to daily 1-2 hour sessions, with maybe a hundred tabs open searching for that “perfect” video or picture. I would download terabytes of torrented porn to find that one specific video. Looking at porn on my phone would be the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing I did before falling asleep at night. It has poisoned my intimate relationships and my views of women in general (when 90% of ones experience of the opposite sex is from online porn, it warps ones real world perceptions). The sessions would eventually start leaving me drained and depressed for a few days after, to the point where I had to time them around important events (like work presentations, etc.) so that I would feel up to the task. I strongly suspect it caused some dysfunction with the real thing, ranging from never quite being satisfied (I would be back looking at porn an hour after sex) to some psychological and physical issues like premature ejaculation and not being able to get aroused for days at a time.
Like many addicts, I tried quitting a few times. The first time was after a week long vacation where I didn’t have easy access to internet. I felt better and got interested in the topic (despite the above I never considered my porn usage “a problem” until then). Turns out there’s an evolving community of people sharing these issues. I abstained for maybe half a year after relapsing. Similarly how smokers who quit talk about being able to experience smell and taste in a new way, this was a revelation. What attracted me in women started to change. Things became more subtle and interesting. I also felt like I no longer needed to have sex all the time and it greatly improved the quality of my relationships.
Most recently, I quit using https://easypeasymethod.org/ (a rewrite of the classic “Easy Way to Stop Smoking” but for porn) and I hope this time for good! If anyone recognizes themselves in this story please do yourself a favor and read through that website - if there’s a 1% chance of it working for you it’s worth it.
I think you can agree that my experience is not “normal” or “healthy”. I also believe a lot of people are in the same boat, as the availability of online porn is only becoming easier with time.
Knowing what I know now I wish I’ve never came across it back then and I’m dreading figuring out how to educate my children about this. The easily available, effectively infinite internet porn is the problem, not just porn in general. I don’t see getting hooked in the same way on magazines or dvds, as repetitiveness gets boring pretty quickly.
There are also a lot of people with a vastly different experience with internet porn. Since we’re sharing personal anecdotes, allow me to describe my experience. I’ve first encountered internet porn in my teenage years. A harmless habit eventually escalated to daily 1-2 hour sessions, with maybe a hundred tabs open searching for that “perfect” video or picture. I would download terabytes of torrented porn to find that one specific video. Looking at porn on my phone would be the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing I did before falling asleep at night. It has poisoned my intimate relationships and my views of women in general (when 90% of ones experience of the opposite sex is from online porn, it warps ones real world perceptions). The sessions would eventually start leaving me drained and depressed for a few days after, to the point where I had to time them around important events (like work presentations, etc.) so that I would feel up to the task. I strongly suspect it caused some dysfunction with the real thing, ranging from never quite being satisfied (I would be back looking at porn an hour after sex) to some psychological and physical issues like premature ejaculation and not being able to get aroused for days at a time.
Like many addicts, I tried quitting a few times. The first time was after a week long vacation where I didn’t have easy access to internet. I felt better and got interested in the topic (despite the above I never considered my porn usage “a problem” until then). Turns out there’s an evolving community of people sharing these issues. I abstained for maybe half a year after relapsing. Similarly how smokers who quit talk about being able to experience smell and taste in a new way, this was a revelation. What attracted me in women started to change. Things became more subtle and interesting. I also felt like I no longer needed to have sex all the time and it greatly improved the quality of my relationships. Most recently, I quit using https://easypeasymethod.org/ (a rewrite of the classic “Easy Way to Stop Smoking” but for porn) and I hope this time for good! If anyone recognizes themselves in this story please do yourself a favor and read through that website - if there’s a 1% chance of it working for you it’s worth it.
I think you can agree that my experience is not “normal” or “healthy”. I also believe a lot of people are in the same boat, as the availability of online porn is only becoming easier with time.
Knowing what I know now I wish I’ve never came across it back then and I’m dreading figuring out how to educate my children about this. The easily available, effectively infinite internet porn is the problem, not just porn in general. I don’t see getting hooked in the same way on magazines or dvds, as repetitiveness gets boring pretty quickly.