Hey everyone,
I am brand new to these forums, and just made my account.
I have tried and failed to quit pornography many times. I am 22 years old, Male.
I am a musician, and have always had a passion for music and gigging that has outweighed pornography overtaking my life completely. Now that the pandemic is still going strong in the US I have had so much down time that porn has become more and more of a black hole of time.
I have been watching pornography since I was 10 years old, since before I understood what it was.
I think my taking to porn so young and my subsequent addiction is caused by childhood trauma. My male cousin used to babysit us, and he would routinely molest me. He never raped me as far as I know, but it was routine and I was never comfortable. I was also like 8 so obviously I didn’t have a choice.
Even through having a revelation years later when I was 18 that all of this even happened as I had repressed it for a while, I still am struggling to eliminate porn from my life, even after understanding this trauma as a root cause. I currently do not have the money to go to therapy for this either, as I am a college student.
I somehow got into hypnosis porn. The idea being that porn addiction IS the fetish, and that relapsing back into watching porn and edging for hours makes it more arousing. This started over 5 years ago and still only watch hypnosis porn exclusively.
Well enough is enough. I have spent years in a concious thought loop of voluntary porn addiction, and I am sick of taking the easy route. I am sick of acting like this problem doesn’t affect me personally. I am sick of acting like it doesn’t affect my relationship with my girlfriend of 3 years, or my friendships, or my schoolwork. I have had enough, and today is day one where I plan to quit porn cold turkey. I have tried weaning but it never works for me.
Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated, as I would love to leave this behind me as quickly as possible and start living a more normal life.
