My situation: 45,M, happily married. I don’t know if I was as addicted as some of y’all but I was an almost everyday user/abuser. I never paid a dime for porn, I was able to satiate my appetite with the free stuff.
Why would a happily married man go down that rabbit hole? Well, my libido was far ahead of my wife’s. She was going thru some undiagnosed hormonal issues and would be exhausted and go to bed every night at 8:00 or so, leaving me to my own devices. She encouraged my porn use so I would leave her alone.
Eventually, I went deeper down rabbit holes until I found interactive text-based subreddits which was like crack to me. That’s when things started getting worse, eventually to the point where my willy wasn’t working. ED was the catalyst for me to quit.
The first time, I was able to quit for 2 months or so. Eventually, I decided the ED was a one-off thing and I could handle it, so I resumed again. I dove in even more than before. And, predictably, the ED came back, but worse.
So I quit. Gave it up, all of it. I deleted my NSFW Reddit account, discord account, my bookmarks, all of the videos I had saved. I even deleted the chive app on my phone as they can be a gateway.
The first few weeks were tough. I would log into r/pornfree to read tales of depravity as motivation instead of NSFW Reddit. If I’m being honest, I peeked once or twice on profiles of a couple of my fav NSFW creditors but no extended viewing.
After that came the flat line. That was terrible. No motivation at all. I went a couple of weeks without so much as a single erection. Work was terrible, I was just tired. (I posted about it in this subreddit if you search my history)
I started working out, and I do think that helped get things back to normal. I went to a Dr and got some viagra, and am working on getting my blood pressure and cholesterol under control. I’m happy to report I only used the viagra once, just for the confidence boost. It’s nice knowing I have it in case things were to stop working again – a nice backup plan.
I’m happy to report that things are swinging closer to normal for me….at least what I think normal is supposed to be. Sex 1x a week seems to be enough for me now ( previous I wanted it every night! I think that was the porn artificially inflating my libido). I wish I had a bit more get-up-and-go and I may look into supplements for that, but only if my wife is feelin it too.
My urges to consume porn are now almost nil. I do think about it sometimes but I don’t have any desire to fall back to that.
I don’t think my dopamine response is completely rewired but I view porn completely differently now than I did prior…now it’s a disgusting habit that I used to do.
I wish y’all the best of luck in your journey. Life is better when you don’t feel like a disgusting perv pretending to be a functioning adult!
LINK – Reflections on 90 days
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