Hi everyone,

I'm going to try to keep this as brief as possible, but I hope my story will be of benefit to others.

My name is theodore and I'm a 22 year old male college student here in America. I've been a pornography addict since puberty, about the age of 11, where when I started developing my sexuality and going through puberty like all of us, I turned to the internet to solve all my answers and curiosities about sex and women. Starting out, I looked at various forms of "light" pornography, like lingerie models, playboy, etc, and it progressively got more explicit as I grew up. The craziest part, and really the most troubling, was that ALL my friends, and every guy I knew, was looking at porn by the age of 13. It felt so totally normal, I never felt like there was any problem. However, at the same time, there were periods in high school where I was really depressed, and shy and had anxiety around girls. I remember feeling so confused because I've always been an outgoing, happy guy, but I was never feeling like that. College, unfortunately, has been a lot like high school. I've had a lot of great times, but a lot of my experience has been plagued by depression and bad social anxiety. Additionally, although I had my first sexual experience with a girl at 16, I couldn't get or maintain an erection until I discovered that I was addicted to porn and stopped--after 2 weeks of abstinence, my erectile dysfunction had disappeared. If you didn't know this already, most pornography addicts suffer from a lot of sexual problems, most notably erectile dysfunction (even with Viagra), because the dopamine response from seeing and being with a real human is minimal compared to what's released during porn.

Now, although I'm happy to say that I've had a mostly great relationship with a beautiful, intelligent girl I met for the past year and a half, my addiction and my relapses have put pits in an otherwise almost-perfect relationship. Although since meeting her I've been able to go abstinent for about a month before relapsing, these relapses have had pretty terrible emotional and mental consequences: for the first 3 weeks, I have always had bad depression and related negativity, lack of concentration, motivation, and severe social anxiety, not to mention a bad sex life. This fall has been really hard with our relationship for a number of reasons, yet I had been able to stay abstinent for 9 weeks through the help of support and a porn addiction therapist, which was a big deal for me.

A couple days ago, after not being able to sleep for hours and having the most intense cravings I've ever had, I relapsed. My state is okay right now because I had progressed so far I think, but I couldn't help but think about the future and how difficult it has been to stay abstinent since meeting my girlfriend. After reading about TSM and what naltrexone had done for alcoholics, I dived in these past couples days to research every single anecdote and study about its efficacy, and it looks like I have a good chance of benefiting from this. I'm excited for the potential of having the thought of receiving no pleasure from pornography, and carrying on with enjoying my life, especially in my last semester of school. Your anecdotal experiences with TSM, being almost all positive, have given me a lot of hope for myself for the future.

I know that there has been some great results posted here in dealing with compulsive behaviors related to porn, so I will keep those interested updated on my progress once I receive my nal and begin.

Thanks!
theodore

P.S.,...PARENTS! Take my experience as a reminder of how important sex education (including how to interpret sexuality in our cultures and society) is for your children. Know what they are doing on the computer. From how I see it, if you or their school/program does not COMPREHENSIVELY educate your children about sex and everything related (including pornography), they are going to get their answers and curiosities solved through their peers and the internet, which is usually hand in hand. Unfortunately, I am part of the first generation where so, so many kids like me have become addicted to internet pornography--it is available on any device, for free, 24/7, and does not censor itself in what can be shown. PLEASE, take my warning and the research (just type in "is porn addictive" in google), pornography is addictive--not everyone will respond to it as negatively as my body and brain does, but my analogy is that it doesn't mean something like cocaine is okay for the average person, let alone a young adult, to experiment with (in fact, the recent research gone into studying the effects of watching pornography has shown over and over that pornography induces your brain to release more dopamine and other reward chemicals than cocaine or heroine might, which might explain why the relapse rate for pornography addicts is so high).

You were a porn addict at age 11? Seriously? My son is 11, and he's watching Spongebob Squarepants right now. It's hard to imagine him seeking out porn, but I'll take your warning to heart.

There hasn't been a lot of research done on addictions other than stuff we ingest. You and our other member seeking help with a gambling problem are kinda blazing a trail here. It's hard to see how it could hurt, though, since naltrexone is such a safe drug.

I've heard several anecdotal stories of porn being cured via Naltrexone + One Hour. It's worth a try, for sure, but I wouldn't bet money on it. Yes, porn is an evil, for sure, especially for an entire generation of boys who've been warped by it. I know when I was that age, we would troll around ditches hoping to catch glimpses of a discarded mag (men would throw them out of their car before getting home). I know for sure that me and my buddies would have thought we died and went to heaven if we had internet porn back then.

Of course, I've struggled some with it, too. Nothing like you and your cohort have, I'm sure. Two things that have helped me are (1) making it really difficult to access by using filters. I've tried Pandora's Hope router, which filters your main computer and all wifi in your dwelling place. I'm currently using Live Parental Controls with my Netgear router, which also works well. Sure, you might get a few images in here and there, but none of the primo porn that you're probably used to. In both cases, you have to either give your girlfriend your password, or find a way to make the password difficult to access (for me, I sign-up with an e-mail and then put in a jumbled password for the address so I couldn't have them send me a new password to my registered e-mail; I then created a jumbled, impossible to remember password for the filter and proceeded to tape it under a desk at a place I work but don't always visit; when I'm there, I'm not jonesing for porn, so it's easy to resist), and (2) besides yourbrainonporn.com, I've found inspiration in general from the so-called "manosphere," which is actually quite hostile to porn as it's destroying manhood (turning men into pasty, afraid-of-real-women, masturbating, weak losers). Reading things from that "macho" perspective helped me (although I generally disdain much of the thought of the manosphere, especially the PUA thing). [I also assume you've read the whole "no fap" page on reddit]. If she was my daughter, besides telling her she shouldn't be having a "sex life" outside of marriage, I'd tell her to run away from a porn addict.

Anyway, just like quitting drinking, ultimately it's something you will have to find a way to accomplish.

Thanks for your advice Barry. I too have used internet filters in the past but have always had trouble with smartphones and their temptations, although I recently read about more iOS apps that are designed by the same companies that do professional content filtering software sold to businesses and homes. I will look into that again. I also have a great counselor who has worked with patients who have had trouble with pornography in the past, along with taking the advice of some of those "man" blogs about being a better man. Those have been great.

I just got prescribed Nal today by a psychiatrist, who was not sure how my behavior would react with the medication but said there was without a doubt a possibility that it could help because of the parallels with porn and alcohol in the endorphins being released. I'll post my results and discoveries as the months go on.

theodore

Do you have any updates Theodore? I am curious on if this method worked for you