I was addicted to porn from age 14 to age 27. That’s 13 years and a LOT of porn watching. What started innocent enough at age 12 when I found my dad’s Playboy collection, turned into an obsessive addiction to Internet videos and DVDs that literally took over my life. Because of my excessive porn habit, at various points in my life, I had terrible problems with Porn-Induced ED and sexual anxiety. At 18 I experienced mild PIED, and in my mid-twenties it became so bad I was frequently depressed.
The turning point was when I was 24 It had been a few months since I had seen my girlfriend. I was really in love with her and found her very attractive. At the time, she was the perfect girl for me – sexy, petite, beautiful, funny and super charismatic. But when I saw her after 4 months of us being apart, when we were stripping off our clothes to make up for lost time, I couldn’t get an erection. What is happening? My mind raced. What is wrong with my penis? Why don’t I have an erection?? She is so amazingly sexy, but physically nothing was happening for me. At various times before that I had experienced some ED from time to time, but this was a complete shut down. No reaction. I didn’t put it together at that moment, but it was because when I was away from her for 4 months, I was using porn daily – sometimes two times per day. I was also “edging” which compounded the problem.
It took almost two months to get back to somewhat normal sex with her, and my confidence suffered a noticeable shock.
After that relationship ended, I experienced sporadic ED problems with other girlfriends, especially the first few times with a new girl — sometimes to the point where it would ruin the relationship. I was miserable.
I went to see a doctor, a sex therapist, even a hypnotist to try to fix my problems. At first I didn’t realize that the problem was pornography and “edging”, but after I discovered some online articles about the link between porn and ED, I knew what I had to do: give up pornography, forever. But knowing what to do and doing it are two different things. I have overcome many difficult obstacles in my life – overcoming crippling shyness by joining toastmasters and entering speech contests; losing over 50 pounds by changing my diet and exercising — but this was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I failed many times before I succeeded in permanently quitting pornography. I read every website with anything useful, I read accounts of other recovering users, and I bought books on psychology, NLP, and habit change. It took me over a year of real, genuine struggle – 20 days, 50 days, 100 days and then back to zero – before I was able to find what worked for me.
I am now 30 years old and have been completely porn-free for a little over 2 years. Since overcoming my porn addiction, I have gotten back the libido I once had and now have a great, satisfying, active sex life. I no longer have any sexual anxiety and have more confidence in the bedroom than ever before. I want you to know, because when you’re going through withdrawal and depression from quitting, it’s important to know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
A little more than a year ago, as I started talking more openly with my male friends about how quitting porn completely turned around my sex life, they would confess to me about their problems – the exact same problems I had experienced years before! So, I started giving advice and essentially running a support group. Over the months, I helped them overcome their addictions and get back their natural libido, by showing them exactly what I did. I gave them the step-by-step program that I used to get over my addiction. And my friends started saying things like “man, there’s gotta be so many guys out there with these problems – and it’s only going to get worse as internet porn gets better and more and more prevalent. Brian, you need to help these guys.”
I started this site to help people like me. It took me years of trial and error to figure out what works to quit porn. I’ve talked to hundreds of other men online about their experiences quitting porn and getting back their sex life, and I want to share the information.
by Brian
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