Hello, Writing this to get my thoughts out, and reach some catharsis as I’ve never admitted any of this to another soul and not even to myself until recently. I’m a 29 year old man started watching internet pornography when I was 12. So 17 years. Although I’m outgoing and people like me, I’ve never felt attractive to women. I am a small slender guy and pretty average looking. Not ugly not particularly handsome. I was made fun of by kids for my height which made me feel bad, but I brushed off long term effects. I made fun of other kids too, so what right did I have to feel bad? As I entered puberty I noticed that my friends started dating and flirting. I always felt locked out of it by my looks. And although socially people liked me, I was awkward around girls I liked. To compensate I began to watch pornography more frequently until I was watching it every day as a teenager. My tastes began to evolve to more extreme hardcore pornography. As I entered college the same thing happened. Girls pushing past me to talk to my friends and me feeling like I was missing out on a universal human experience. During this time I first heard about Nofap and made an attempt to give up porn as I heard it could make me better with girls. Needless to say it didn’t work for more than a week or two. I gave myself the usual excuses, that I had a high sex drive and I would just look at pornography until I got a gf. Although I had some girls like me I would mess it up from my lack of experience. And so it continued on. i had always done sports and during college I fell in love with weightlifting. I began to lift and as I got stronger, I noticed far more attention from girls. It felt addicting to finally get attention from girls, to get cat called on runs or see friends checking me out from the corner of their eyes. I felt on top of the world and ready to tackle anything. I was convinced that lifting would fix all my problems. Unfortunately I got a chronic injury that forced me to stop exercising and lifting weights. I lost all my muscle and moved back home with my parents after graduation. There I worked in dead end jobs living at home with a far smaller social group. I began to use marijuana extensively during this time which increased the high from PMO. I also began to have bisexual fantasies. I would try to strike up conversations with women at parties or at work, then when I was ignored or rejected, go home and PMO while high on weed and chain smoking cigarettes. My injury gave me chronic pain and I fell into a deep depression. During lockdown this increased and I began to have severe ED even with pornography. My tastes became more niche and more extreme. I began acting out by meeting up with men anonymously for oral sex. I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t enjoy it but I would always feel dirty or not satisfied afterwards. I was in turmoil and thought for several years I was bisexual. During lockdown I began taking classes and would stay in my room all day, hurting from my injury then smoking weed and PMO with ED and feeling sorry for myself. I’m not condoning this but during this time I experimenting heavily with psychedelic mushrooms. Mushrooms are an interesting drug because they can push a lot of what’s hidden in your subconscious to the surface. My trips were fun and carefree and then I began PMOing while using them. At the same time, they are not exactly a fun party drug. When I use marijuana I want to smoke more cigarette’s, eat unhealthy food and masturbate for longer. When using shrooms I would get horny and PMO but they would frequently give me a searing moral conviction that the porn, weed and cigarettes in my life was evil, that I was headed down a path of destruction. I’ll never forget the strongest feeling of conviction. It was 3 am and i was on the tail end of a shroom trip. My ED was bad at that point but especially bad on drugs of any kind. I was attempting to masturbate and having no luck. But I kept trying. All of a sudden I became hyper aware of my brain and felt like I could dopamine flooding my brain with every stroke. It hit me that I was using pornography as a coping mechanism. That I was a rat frantically trying to hit the pleasure button so I didnt have to deal with my mental health struggles. I also had another experience where I was high on shrooms and was going to PMO. I felt like i was trapped inside myself and watching another control me. I was screaming at myself to stop but I couldn’t. I became convinced that I would have to give up pornography, but this conviction seemed to wax and wane. It was most powerful after a mushroom trip, least powerful after smoking weed. I was still abusing shrooms and I began have frequent visions of myself as a middle aged man, still living a double life, still addicted to cigarettes and weed. I began to realize that to give up pornography, I was probably going to have to give up weed. The thought terrified me as at that point I had been smoking weed every day for years. But as lockdown ended and I got a job and started trying to apply to grad school, my usage of weed porn and nicotine decreased. I would still binge on the weekends and act out with other men. fast forward to now. I threw out all of my weed in April and have been trying to quit pornography and weed. I’ve realized sober and reading your guys accounts that my supposed bisexuality is actually just porn escalation. I have never looked at a man in real life and felt any attraction towards him. I’ve had two porn slip ups since April. However I was still going on gay dating sites. I’ve realized that my porn addiction is leading me towards a sex addiction with men and I need to not use porn and not go on any gay dating websites to reset my brain. a few weeks ago I almost met up with a man for penetrative sex (something I’ve never done). Luckily it didn’t schedule out. It was a wake up call for me because I know if I don’t cut this in the bud now, I will develop a full sex addiction and become the man I hallucinated in my shroom trips. This year has been good for me, a time of healing and growth. I’ve given up weed, given up smoking (nicotine gum) and have reduced my porn use. Until recently I was still going on gay hookup apps. I dated a girl for a year and my injury has relieved itself enough for me to exercise lightly. I’m going to grad school. My shroom use is intermittent, every several months (I think shrooms with friends is healthy but not solo) and I expect it to dissipate except for once every year or so once I go to grad school. Not opposed to giving it up completely if it is a PMO trigger. Anyway sorry for the wall of text. I am going on NOFAP and journaling to make myself more aware of my triggers and to share my story.
