Start with why. Why did you get addicted? Abuse? Trauma? Shitty parents?

I've actually thought long and hard about why I am prone to compulsive behaviors like PMO and drugs in my youth. My parents were a bit emotionally distant but I grew up in a decent enough home. I have re-occurring depression but no severe underlying trauma or emotional stress in my life. I am married, have a great wife that I love very much, and we are both satisfied with our relationship and our faith. I have probably relapsed around two dozen times? in the last year and a half to PMO. Have had no tangible consequences with this level of use but still something I am morally opposed to and definitely want out of my life.

Anyway, I agree that we have hidden hurts that we can turn to pleasure to soothe, and severe trauma can help addiction grow and escalate quickly. However I also want to caution not to get overly caught up in the why. Sometimes people are just very susceptible to certain weaknesses.

In the book Under the Influence, about alcoholism, the author explains how some people progress in addiction largely to a genetic set of deficiencies. Children of alcoholics are more at risk than general population to become addicted even when separated from parents at birth and raised by non-alcoholics. Sometimes you can start taking consequences from the addiction and applying it backward as to why people are addicted. Like this person is an alcoholic because they are anxious and have disarray in finances and relationships so they drink to avoid it. But those things came from the addiction at first and only after the fact they help reinforce it, but not cause it to begin with.

It's good to know oneself but some things will remain a mystery. In my somewhat milder case I have had to eventually conclude I just have an appetite for pleasure that will overpower my will if left unchecked. I truly can't find any great pain or trauma that I am running from even though it's a very common thing listed as a part of recovering from addiction.

 

I was shy and ackward and discovered porn before my first girlfriend. it was my only sexual outlet until my mid 20s.

 

It ultimately started because I was a horny, curious kid that had access to shit that a person should never see in their lifetime.

 

No abuse, no trauma, no shitty parents etc.

Just weakness and complacency. That's pretty much it. No point making excuses now.

 

Yeah, I feel like there are a lot of us like CK and Ash. Sure some people are abused or something and the deep trauma speeds and addiction along.

But you give even a normal person access to unlimited novelty with P and pleasure on demand and the brain can re-wire around that just due to biology.

Sometimes the root cause is as simple as that. How we deal with negative effects of P may create pain and mess up our relationships though.

All in all we should think as much or as little about the addiction as is helpful and the real progress comes when we get support, make good boundaries and accountability, and resist this thing one day at a time.

 

Because everyone did it, basically.

 

No abuse, no trauma, and I have loving, supportive parents.

I got addicted to porn because I was a horny teenager and it was there.

 

I'm willing to bet that's how the majority of us got addicted.

 

Yeah I mean, I guess porn addiction is maybe different than other addictions in this way? I'm not an expert on the psychology of addiction. But young boys and men are horny. That's just how people are. Especially when you're going through puberty. And when you're that age, you crave that release and that outlet. THAT part is normal. What isn't normal is spending all your time jacking off and looking at porn all day.

 

Here's what happened in many cases for people our age. At around the same time our parents got computers and the internet we reached the age of puberty. They failed to put two and two together and now here we are.

 

Exactly my story. I went through puberty in the late 90s/early 00s. Just went the internet was becoming huge in personal homes. No concept of content filters or the idea of porn addiction. Started there. Definitely wasn't my parents' fault. There was no precedent.

 

There was no precedent but man I wish there was. My parents will never know the damage they did to me, though it wasn't on purpose of course.

 

This, this and this.

 

Back when I discovered Masturbation I used it as a stress and mood reliever. Because at the time family household had a lot of conflict and I wanted a way I to relieve that stress.Then i discovered porn, to feed the horny beast I was.

 

I guess i started because i was curious, although I was masturbating compulsively before we had the internet. The internet was just like a pandoras box for me with a never ending supply. I never spoke to anyone about it and therefore no one told me stop or questioned my behaviour, at one point later on in my habbit I reached the conclusion 'why do i need a girlfriend when there's so much porn for free' I had traumas but there are also people here who haven't experienced things like abuse as a child or poor parenting etc. I think the more we bottle things up and neglect our 'true' emotional needs we seek to replace them with synthetic alternatives like porn, drugs, sex etc the problem is the plaster keeps falling off and the wound never heals unless you treat the infection.

 

I wonder how many people here get aroused at the sound of the old dial up modems connecting...or was it just me?

 

What a huge difference a decade makes. When I was just starting my teens, there was no internet. By college, yes. But I thank God i didn't have access like a lot of you did. I don't have any erectile issues, and my porn use is rather of the mundane sort. "Edging" wasn't a thing. "transsexual" wasn't a thing. And similar to all these other weird fetishes you hear about, such as sissy porn and what not. I grew up only a decade away from that shit and i thank God i did. Anal sex was the most hardcore porn we would watch. and you only could have so many porn movies and magazines. If you had a dozen different porn movies, that was a lot. And they'd get boring. These days...yikes. the diversity.

 

In porn i found comfort from a world of rejection. All the girls did whatever, whenever i liked. I was king of it all and they were my slaves. And when the fantasy was over i'd resent a world that wouldn't treat me as porn treated me. It turned me into a selfish egomaniac.

 

my story is a bit different - had a bad bad family situation, which included my dad dealing porn on the side....i got access at a young age

and its what i learnt about love, as i didnt see it in real life - confused my brain, and my brothers

working through it now