Porn Then and Now: Welcome to Brain Training (2011)

In Porn Then and Now: Welcome to Brain Training I look at the how and why porn from the internet is so compelling, so hard to stop watching.

See the many comments below the article.

“Are we the first generation to masturbate left-handed?”

A Reddit poster recently asked, “Are we the first generation to masturbate left-handed because our right hands are browsing porn?” Yes, an entire generation is becoming “ambi-wackstrous” as one wag put it.

Once upon a time, masturbation called for a lot of imagination. It was rehearsal for the real thing: “First I’m gonna do this…and then….” No longer.

“I’m part of the last generation to start masturbating before they had the Internet. I can’t fathom having access to visual representations of every possible sexual taste before feeling the biological urge to whack it. When I was a kid, we were all desperate to look at boobs, but the opportunity only came by one or two glorious times a year [via catalog]. I honestly wonder how tits-on-tap affect later generations.”

What does this shift mean? Internet porn use more closely parallels videogaming than real sex. It combines your genes’ No. 1 priority—and biggest natural reward (sex)—with the conPorn Then and Now - Wanker's crampstantly changing, ever-novel-and-surprising delivery of “World of Warcraft.” Your left hand is applying more pressure and speed than intercourse. Your right hand is clicking away in “search mode,” as your eyes dart from one screen to the next and moaning fills your ears. No imaginary orchestration needed.

Porn, and the way it is delivered to our brains, has changed. Alas, our brains haven’t yet adapted, and this can create unexpected problems:

“I’ve used porn for years. I just like watching people have sex. My problem escalated about 18 months ago when I got high-speed Internet. All of a sudden, I went from just viewing pictures online, to viewing videos and movies online instantaneously. I never really gave it much thought, but after almost daily viewing—sometimes even binging for hours on end watching porn videos—I really began to notice a change in my personal sex life with my wife. I had never really had any ED problems at all. But now, whenever my wife and I start to have sex, I cannot get an erection. Sometimes I get one, but then it quickly starts getting soft. Sex has been almost non-existent for us.”

Ahh, the good old days:

In my school days, you’d be lucky to see porn on VHS video once in a while and they tended to be crap quality. Once you quickly got bored of it, it was back to fantasying about the older girl next door. Kids need protecting from this internet shit.

Another guy:

“There’s a difference between today’s online porn and that of just a couple decades ago. Now, you can go to a variety of websites and find more free porn than you could watch if you quit your job and dedicated your life to it—all in living color. You can even pick your favorite fetish, whatever you find the most intense, and just watch video after video of it. If the intensity wanes for a few seconds, or you get bored with watching the same bodies for two minutes straight, you can jump to a new set doing new things. It has the potential to be far more destructive to your appreciation for the real thing than ever before.”

Exactly. Internet porn exploits more than just sexual desire. It drives users beyond their natural libido: Users can watch porn in multiple windows, search endlessly, view constant novelty, fast-forward to the bits they find hottest, switch to live sex chat, fire up their mirror neurons with video action or cam-2-cam, or escalate to extreme genres and anxiety-producing material. It’s all free, easy to access, available within seconds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and can be viewed on phones at any age. Before long, it will be enhanced with sex toys that simulate physical contact.

Zoom into the brain

What drives this unnatural “mating” frenzy? Dopamine. It’s the primary neurochemical behind reward-seeking behavior. Dopamine levels are the barometer by which we decide (and remember) the value of any experience. Not surprisingly, sexual stimuli raise dopamine far more than other natural rewards.

Most people think of dopamine as the “buzz,” the “sugar high,” or the drive towards orgasm. Actually, it spikes in response to stimuli associated with survival needs. It’s motivation. It tells us what to approach or avoid and where to put our attention. Further, it tells us what to remember, by helping to rewire our brains.

Internet porn just happens to elicit spikes of dopamine for all of the “salient” stimuli for which we evolved to be on the lookout:

  • Strong emotions: surprise, fear, disgust, anxiety
  • Novelty: new food sources, new predators, new mates
  • Seeking and searching: exploring territories, foods or mating opportunities
  • Anything that violates expectations: unexpected bonanzas or dangers

Erotic words, pictures and videos have been around a long time. So has the neurochemical rush from novel mates. Yet the novelty of a once-a-month Playboy evaporates as soon as you turn the pages. Would anyone call Playboy or softcore videos “shocking” or “anxiety-producing?” Would either violate the expectations of a computer-literate boy over the age of 12? Neither compares with the “searching and seeking” of a multiple-tab Google prowl. Research confirms anticipation of reward and novelty amplfy one another to increase excitement and rewire the limbic brain. (see this reddit thread: I spend more time looking for the right porn video then I actually spend fapping).

Porn Then And Now Chart

The phrase “Variety is the spice of life” comes from a William Cowper poem (1785) about a guy who courted a different girl every week. But the Internet makes possible a never-ending stream of Tabasco sauce in the form of dopamine spikes. My Google search for “porn” just retrieved about 1.3 billion pages (with “Porn for the Blind” in my top ten). Constant stimulation can interfere with the way we think, even without erotic imagery. In fact, studies have shown that compulsive Internet use (videogaming) causes addiction-related brain changes.

“It was getting pretty bad. I would take a chick home and sometimes not even be able to get my d*ck up because porn had rewired my brain and conditioned it to have 5-6 girls at a time. One girl, even though she was there in person, was not doing the trick.”

Why is constant dopamine stimulation so addictive? As neuroscientist David Linden explains, smoking hooks a far greater percentage of users than heroin, even though heroin furnishes a bigger neurochemical blast. Why? It’s a question of brain training. Every puff of each of those 20 cigarettes per pack is training the smoker that cigarettes are rewarding. In contrast, how often can someone shoot up? At base addiction is “pathological learning.”

In the case of Internet porn, think of the constant novelty, the shocking or anxiety-producing visuals, and the clicks in search of the perfect shot as puffs, and orgasm as something stronger. Both train the brain. However, we hear from guys all the time with porn-induced ED, who will give up masturbation to try to heal rather than give up Internet porn. They instinctively know where the dopamine drip is:

“I tend to think it’s the porn that is the hyper-stimulus resulting in erectile dysfunction, not the masturbation. The odd thing I am finding about my personal experiment is that without online porn, I don’t really feel like masturbating. Even when I try, am not aroused enough to masturbate. My mind doesn’t fantasize anymore, like it used to when I was a kid in the pre-Internet days.”

Today’s porn use is more about dopamine hits than climax

Dopamine drives all arousal, but a steady stream of ever changing erotic stimulation is a far more powerful mind-training experience than occasional masturbation to orgasm. This is why online erotica can create powerful addictions in some brains.

Sadly, abundance of dopamine doesn’t equal satisfaction. Its message is always, “Satisfaction lies just around the corner, so keep going!” Behavioral addiction research on food, gambling and Internet videogaming shows that too much dopamine numbs the pleasure response of the brain. This indicates addiction processes are creeping in. A numbed brain lead to cravings for more; even the perfect shot will not satisfy. Today’s porn doesn’t just meet your needs; it distorts them.

For me, my addiction to seeking Porn images online seems like a gambling addiction. I find the vast majority of images online either boring or disgusting. Only a very small percentage turn me on, but there are the “jackpot” images that push all my buttons and make the hours of searching “pay off”. So each time I go online, I am gambling that I will find something arousing, and I hit the jackpot just often enough to keep me searching, even though I know the house is winning and I am losing vast amounts of time.

Watching a sunset, petting a cat, and watching your favorite team are not the same as more intense pleasures. With normal pleasures, you get dopamine signals and then your brain returns to homeostasis. In contrast, some activities have the potential to dysregulate dopamine long-term.

Indeed the medical doctors of the American Society of Addiction Medicine recently issued a statement citing sex, food and gambling as potentially addictive activities. They leave no doubt that all addictions—whether to alcohol, heroin or sex—are fundamentally the same. Psychologist Philip Zimbardo, too, has pointed to the dangers of “arousal addiction.” (TED talk The Demise of Guys?)

Even young men are warning each other about Internet porn. Bodybuilding thread: “The NO FAP thread to end all no fap threads” ; Reddit thread: “Ask a guy who quit porn for 2 months now anything.” They are also figuring out that porn causes escalation and creates bogus sexual tastes:

“Porn binges for 4-6 hours the last couple days. On the plus side, it did become obvious that  transexual porn is unrelated to my sexuality. After watching for 30+ hours over the past 5 days , transexual porn started to become boring! I began searching for other, more disgusting and shocking stuff.”

The qualities of Internet porn affect the brain in unique ways. In addition to constant stimulation, there’s no inherent limit to consumption—unlike eating or drugs. Escalation is always possible because the brain’s natural satiation mechanisms don’t kick in unless one climaxes—which may not be for hours. Even then, users can click to something more shocking to become aroused again. Nor will Internet porn eventually activate the brain’s natural aversion system (“I can’t tolerate another bite/drink/snort!”). Who can’t bear to look at another erotic image? Reproduction is our genes’ top priority after all.

UPDATE: Virtual Reality porn

A user reports:

I found [Virtual Reality porn] more addictive and it put me over the edge, it made me realize that Virtual Reality is just going to get better and better and the Porn  studios are going to get better and better at producing VR porn so it was likely better I get out now.

I was a relative early adopter of VR (Oculus DK2 back in Summer 2014) so I had almost 1 and a half years of VR porn use under my belt and during 2015 more studios  got on board and things started to really take off but so did my addiction as a result. And I found myself going to pay sites for the first time in my entire life and actually paying  for porn instead of just torrenting it! Because I didn’t want to wait for torrents to become available!

Become aware of the symptoms of excess

The belief that “porn use can cause no harm” arose in the era of monthly Playboy. Like it or not, Internet porn is as different from past erotica as “Super Mario” is from tic-tac-toe. Research and self-reports make this evident. Instead of being “just porn,” Internet porn is a new phenomenon, for which evolution has not prepared many brains.  (Guys who used Internet porn during their adolesence need longer to regain their erectile health, see – Young Porn Users Need Longer To Recover Their Mojo.  A story of sexual conditioning via Internet porn: A September 2015 TEDx talk by a young man who need extra time and relearning/rewiring to overcome porn-induced ED and anorgasmia –

Your ancestors had no Internet or memory banks of porn-based fantasy. If they masturbated, normal libido and their own imagination got the job done. If your sexual responsiveness is decreasing, or you need porn to climax, then you are, in effect, overriding your brain’s natural appetite mechanisms, and risking addiction. Wait until your brain returns to normal sensitivity. Withdrawal may be difficult, but tips and support are available.

Your brain didn’t evolve to handle today’s erotica-at-a-click. It doesn’t just see videos; it perceives endless fertilization opportunities, and it will use its dopamine “whip” to make sure you fertilize as many as possible—whatever the cost to you. Instead of getting off and getting on with life, today’s viewers often continue for as long as they can stay awake—unaware that they may be at risk for addiction or performance problems. As Eliezer Yudkowsky once wrote,

“If people have the right to be tempted—and that’s what free will is all about—the market is going to respond by supplying as much temptation as can be sold. Market incentive continues well beyond the point where a superstimulus begins wreaking collateral damage on the consumer.”

Learn the signals that indicate excessive porn use. (Read others’ self-reports.) You can’t go by what your friends are doing, or even by the advice of sexologists or doctors. Go by what you notice.

“Back in the day of dial-up, I was only able to download the occasional picture (very soft-porn) due to bad/slow Internet and not knowing where to find all the smuttery. But now with high-speed, even to mobile phones, it has made me continuously watch more and more and at higher resolution. It sometimes becomes a whole day affair looking for the perfect one to finish on. It never, ever satisfies. “Need more” the brain always says…such a lie.”

Post on r/NoFap – The Evolution of Porn

The depiction of sex was present before it was even video captured from the third century book of Kama Sutra to the sculptures in the city of Pompeii.

But it has only been in the last sixty years or so that porn has begun to spread like wildfire. The first was the Playboy magazine that began depicting nude women via still images back in the year of 1953. Keep in mind that back then it was a criminal offense to even publish such material as is the case of the convicted Samuel Roth.

It was only when Lasse Braun and his business partner, Reuben Sturman started peep shows with loops of film that the real trouble began. Sturman began setting up more than 60,000 peep shows that were set up with single booths displaying porn and had tissue boxes propped up. They were known as “pay and spray” booths. But videos had not reached mainstream yet due to the court ruling and the inability to view it privately.

That all changed when the VHS was brought in along with the Miller court case ruling. The result was astonishing, around 75% of VHC tapes sold in the US in 1978 were pornographic.

Fast forward to 1991 and the world wide web was introduced. Still images could now be brought to your display in an instant without going out to one of those peep shows. A couple of years later and the internet continued to spread and grow in its speed. This lead to the rapid growth of pornography as well as expansion in all genres. Suddenly, it was accessible, private and no expenditure on the user was required.

All the criteria of the ultimate addiction was fulfilled. But that was not all that the rapid growth of porn brought, it also affected the media and skewed the people’s perspective on what is considered as porn.

Back in the 1960s, a women topless or showing some skin was considered softcore porn. Look around you and specifically at your social media circle. Your feed on facebook from friends to ads has simply become the softcore porn of 1960s. The terms will continue to spread and sooner or later porn might become the norm for the coming generations. Another aspect to consider is today’s role models from kim kardashian to miley cyrus.

Even a music video today cannot be famous unless there is some shedding of skin or has women with revealing clothing acting in obscene ways. Your messenger is sometimes bombarded with texts to buy pornographic images from young women. People must wake up to this terrible ordeal and take action. If we continue down this evolutionary pathway, the beast will only continue to grow and I for one definitely don’t this for our future generations.

Some facts to consider about pornography:

By 2012, Xvideos had become the largest porn site on the web with 4.4 billion page views per months. Xvideos was three times the size of CNN or ESPN, and twice the size of Reddit. Pornhub dwarfs regular sites and sits next to google in terms of storage utilization. Today, Xvideos is the 43rd most popular website in the world.

So to sum it up, pornography is growing and evolving along with the technological tides (e.g. Virtual Reality), however technology can be used to also increase our awareness and motivate us to quit such addictive habits.

Post on r/NoFap – It’s crazy how porn use is not at all on the radar of most of our parents

I’ve been a chronic masturbator since my teens. I didn’t see a hell of a lot of porn in high school due to having to use the family computer but I saw my fair share, being sneaky and fapping later to the images burned into my brain. But once I got out of high school and had my own laptop I went nuts. Hours and hours of porn everyday and my twice a day masturbation habit exploded to five times a day. I chose to live by myself and masturbate and smoke weed as much as possible. Obviously my mental health deteriorated tremendously.

Later I moved back into my parents house but didn’t let that stop me from being on my laptop for porn as much as possible. My parents were on my case all the time for being unproductive. But they literally thought I was just lying in my bed watching YouTube videos and such. Porn was not on their radar at all.

Since I discovered nofap I have quit masturbating and porn and feel so much better that I’ve told almost everyone I know about my chronic masturbation and porn use and how I’ve ended it. Including my parents. I always assumed they knew I was addicted to porn and just didn’t want to acknowledge it. But it turns out they really had no idea! It’s like they don’t understand a porn habit because they grew up basically without porn. They never ever connected the dots and literally just thought I was lazy. I wasn’t lazy, I was addicted and my brain was mush from the constant masturbation.

Since I quit porn and MO, I have zero desire to just lie around like I used to. I never would have done that if it hadn’t been for the porn. My mom was talking about a friend”s son who is 29 and has done nothing with his life, still lives at home and spends all night on the computer. Again, his parents have made no connection to porn use, they just think he is lazy and hooked to the computer. I was like “hello?! It’s porn!!!!” and my mom was like “really? You think?”

In short, most of the older generation has no concept whatsoever of porn habits/addictions. Their kids are addicted to it and the parents have no idea because they just can’t wrap their heads around this whole porn thing. They’re not in denial, they literally just never think of it. The only ones who understand are those with porn use experience and that is rare with the older generation. They might have bought the odd skin mag back in the day but that is nothing compared to the galaxy of porn their kids are watching, probably every day. It’s sad because there’s a lot of frustrated parents out there who are just baffled by their unproductive sons. If they understood the anatomy of a porn habit it would really save a lot of families a lot of grief.

Excellent post – Mainstream porn’s descent into depravity (or why I’m quitting to save my psychological sanity and you should too)

(Using a throwaway account for personal reasons, also apologies this is a long read)

CW: discussion of PMO, rape, incest, child sexualization, various fetishes

Anybody else noticed this? I’ve been addicted to PMO for many years, enough to be more familiar with porn than I’m comfortable with. Despite this, I’ve only ever viewed relatively straight-forward, vanilla, man/woman porn and avoided the truly fucked up stuff. Thankfully I haven’t developed any horrible or bizarre fetishes and I’ve consistently found myself feeling deeply disgusted anytime I’ve been even slightly exposed to anything abnormal. I also suffer from intrusive thoughts and I’ve made an active effort to avoid anything that could fuel these persecutory thoughts.

Pornhub has been my website of choice for a long time now, and I’ve slowly noticed a sharp turn towards much darker content in many of the videos produced by mainstream companies and the videos posted on the FrontPage (specifically in the “most popular” section).

I’ve looked at the top of the front page of pornhub enough times and over such a long period of time that I’ve seen it happen first hand: where there were once relatively straightforward vanilla man/woman videos, suddenly videos with deeply concerning fetishitic concepts and taboos such as incest, domination or even pseudo-rape are among the most popular and promoted videos taking their place at the front of the website. Avoiding this kind of content has become a hard task, even the thumbnails seem to place emphasis on amplifying the deprived nature of these videos.

The adverts on the website are even worse often featuring foot fetishism and sexualised pictures of cartoon characters and again it’s often impossible to avoid exposure to this due to the adverts autoplaying at the side of videos and popping up every time you pause the video. (In fact, in many ways the adverts are the worst aspect, designed to display these taboo fetishes in an incredibly bold and attention-grabbing way in order to draw interested users’ interest and awaken latent fetishes that the user may not have been aware of until this point).

I’ve also noticed a concerning trend among many of the most popular porn companies where new porn stars seem to be getting more and more young-looking. now, this may be the result of me getting older (I started PMO when I was an early teenager and have continued it into my mid-20s) but i genuinely believe there is an effort on the part of porn companies to target the youngest-looking, most petite women in order to appeal to the taboo fetish of ephebophilia and whether they realise it or not I believe this will lead many down the dark and unredeemable path of genuine child/teen sexualization ie paedophilia/hebephilia.

After growing weary of pornhub (or any other widely used porn sites) I thought I’d turn to reddit gifs. reddit seemed a more controlled environment but i can’t count the number of times now that I’ve clicked on a gif of seemingly vanilla sexual content only to immediately rush for the back button after seeing the watermark for one of these companies that specializes in this kind of taboo content and the realisation that I just viewed a clip from one of those incest or domination videos. Or even worse, the gif starts normally but soon reveals its source as a domination video and shows a woman being brutalized in a horrifying way.

Now, of course, I don’t believe the reason for this is some kind of wide conspiracy designed to distort the sexual identities of an entire generation of men (or maybe it is, who knows?) but it’s important to remember these porn companies are businesses and their particular business is taboo. In order to keep the clicks and memberships and money coming, they need to be constantly reinventing themselves and keeping the porn users reliant on their content. for them this involves a descent into the darkest taboos while at the same time walking the fine line of social acceptability (in many ways it mirrors the descent many PMO users undertake in order to satisfy their uncontrollable lust, a descent into ever more deprived fetishes).

i find this deeply, deeply troubling. It seemed this kind of content was once relegated to the darker corners of the internet and deep web and now it’s slowly gaining traction on mainstream, widely-used websites. The porn that i was exposed to as an early teenager seems quaint compared to what teens in early puberty are being exposed to now. When I consider the hugely negative effect porn has had on my life, I worry about the psychological effect that it will have on many young, developing men (and women too). i even read an article a while back about a young kid who raped his sister after continued exposure to stepbrother/stepsister porn and I was horrified beyond belief, to me this is a possible outcome that can arise from the distorted sexuality that this content creates in young people.

Because of my addiction (and it IS an addiction) and the fact that I suffer from intrusive thoughts, I’ve tried repeatedly to invent new and increasingly contrived methods to avoid exposure to this abnormal content, but it always seems to worm its way through into my psyche and I’m coming to realise that my own moral values don’t line up with those of pornography (and this is a good thing I think).

For many years I’ve been able to justify my porn usage to myself largely because what I was watching wasn’t “too bad”, or convincing myself that “everybody else my age is watching it so why shouldn’t I?” but now I realise that porn acts in a similar manner to a “gateway drug”, only porn is a gateway into depravity and degeneration of the mind and soul.

When you watch porn, everything loses its innocence, everything is reduced to hyper-sexualisation and this opens a path to an endless void of debauchery and misery. All those cartoons you loved as a child and took value and meaning from are now consumed as fuel for your empty arousal. Every woman you meet or pass on the street is a possible whore. Even your loved ones can be reduced to nothing more than sexual objects fueled by a forbidden taboo. i can’t even look at somebody’s feet now without feeling a sense of disgust, self-persecution and a crippling paranoia that I may somehow be aroused by them, that I may be so far gone that I’ve collapsed into this void of total debauchery.

Every time I’m exposed to something like this now, because of the intrusive thoughts, I feel like I’ve been psychologically raped in some way (and I know that’s incredibly disrespectful and probably not a fair comparison so I deeply apologise if anyone is offended but I couldn’t think of a term that describes the emptiness and self-loathing adequately) I’m sick of feeling like the protagonist of a Lovecraft short story every time I finish masturbating, as though I’ve been exposed to an unexplainable horror (and much of it IS unexplainable, how would you explain any of this complex, ultra-sexual content to a parent or psychologist who has no experience of the internet, for instance?)

Thankfully, I’ve resisted much of my exposure to this disgusting content, but I know that there are perhaps those who haven’t. I want to let you know that it isn’t too late. acknowledging it as a problem is the first step and from there you can work on repairing the psychological damage it caused and making movements towards living a more fulfilling and happy life.

I think most people who become PMO users desire the true, wholesome love of Warmth and compassion but various circumstances lead to us being deprived of this, leaving a void and we desperately try to fill it with pornography or various other things we think will work. It never does but we are not beyond help, there is a way out.

tbh, I just wanted to vent about an issue that has damaged me greatly and that, I believe is damaging many others.

if you’ve read all this, then thank you, I hope you got something of value out of it.

tl;dr: I believe porn is heading down a dark path of debauchery and dragging down many others with it.

Porn Then and Now

Relevant articles

Relevant YBOP material

  1. Porn/sex addiction? This page lists 40 neuroscience-based studies (MRI, fMRI, EEG, neuropsychological, hormonal). They provide strong support for the addiction model as their findings mirror the neurological findings reported in substance addiction studies.
  2. The real experts’ opinions on porn/sex addiction? This list contains 18 recent literature reviews & commentaries by some of the top neuroscientists in the world. All support the addiction model.
  3. Signs of addiction and escalation to more extreme material? Over 30 studies reporting findings consistent with escalation of porn use (tolerance), habituation to porn, and even withdrawal symptoms (all signs and symptoms associated with addiction).
  4. An official diagnosis? The world’s most widely used medical diagnostic manual, The International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), contains a new diagnosis suitable for porn addiction: “Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder.”
  5. Debunking the unsupported talking point that “high sexual desire” explains away porn or sex addiction: At least 25 studies falsify the claim that sex & porn addicts “just have high sexual desire”
  6. Porn and sexual problems? This list contains 27 studies linking porn use/porn addiction to sexual problems and lower arousal to sexual stimuli. The first 5 studies in the list demonstrate causation, as participants eliminated porn use and healed chronic sexual dysfunctions.
  7. Porn’s effects on relationships? Almost 60 studies link porn use to less sexual and relationship satisfaction. (As far as we know all studies involving males have reported more porn use linked to poorer sexual or relationship satisfaction.)
  8. Porn use affecting emotional and mental health? Over 55 studies link porn use to poorer mental-emotional health & poorer cognitive outcomes.
  9. Porn use affecting beliefs, attitudes and behaviors? Check out individual studies – over 25 studies link porn use to “un-egalitarian attitudes” toward women and sexist views – or the summary from this 2016 meta-analysis: Media and Sexualization: State of Empirical Research, 1995–2015. Excerpt:

The goal of this review was to synthesize empirical investigations testing effects of media sexualization. The focus was on research published in peer-reviewed, English-language journals between 1995 and 2015. A total of 109 publications that contained 135 studies were reviewed. The findings provided consistent evidence that both laboratory exposure and regular, everyday exposure to this content are directly associated with a range of consequences, including higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater self-objectification, greater support of sexist beliefs and of adversarial sexual beliefs, and greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women. Moreover, experimental exposure to this content leads both women and men to have a diminished view of women’s competence, morality, and humanity.

  1. What about sexual aggression and porn use? Another meta-analysis: A Meta‐Analysis of Pornography Consumption and Actual Acts of Sexual Aggression in General Population Studies (2015). Excerpt:

22 studies from 7 different countries were analyzed. Consumption was associated with sexual aggression in the United States and internationally, among males and females, and in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Associations were stronger for verbal than physical sexual aggression, although both were significant. The general pattern of results suggested that violent content may be an exacerbating factor.

  1. What about the porn use and adolescents? Check out this list of over 200 adolescent studies, or this 2012 review of the research – The Impact of Internet Pornography on Adolescents: A Review of the Research (2012). From the conclusion:

Increased access to the Internet by adolescents has created unprecedented opportunities for sexual education, learning, and growth. Conversely, the risk of harm that is evident in the literature has led researchers to investigate adolescent exposure to online pornography in an effort to elucidate these relationships. Collectively, these studies suggest that youth who consume pornography may develop unrealistic sexual values and beliefs. Among the findings, higher levels of permissive sexual attitudes, sexual preoccupation, and earlier sexual experimentation have been correlated with more frequent consumption of pornography…. Nevertheless, consistent findings have emerged linking adolescent use of pornography that depicts violence with increased degrees of sexually aggressive behavior.

The literature does indicate some correlation between adolescents’ use of pornography and self-concept. Girls report feeling physically inferior to the women they view in pornographic material, while boys fear they may not be as virile or able to perform as the men in these media. Adolescents also report that their use of pornography decreased as their self-confidence and social development increase. Additionally, research suggests that adolescents who use pornography, especially that found on the Internet, have lower degrees of social integration, increases in conduct problems, higher levels of delinquent behavior, higher incidence of depressive symptoms, and decreased emotional bonding with caregivers.

122 thoughts on “Porn Then and Now: Welcome to Brain Training (2011)”

  1. As one guy said:

    How to let go of you harem? Just take your computer, and look at the screen from one side. What do you see? A side of a screen.. there is nothing there, nothing behind it. That is as close as you’ll get to those women on the screen.. when you realize this, and I mean really understand what I mean, you will pop out of that longing for your harem.

  2. Another guy said:

    It probably is indeed the masturbation in combination with the internet pornography that triggers this addiction to be so powerful. Some people refer to it as visual cocaine, myself I actually call it visual meth :p because I still found that somewhat of an understatement. I believe this IP addiction is top of the class. Sometimes the pull can just be so amazingly strong, and your limbic can just dominate you. I’ve experienced this first hand many times.

  3. Post from MedHelp comparing Internet porn to “old porn”
    Taken from this thread on ED and Internet Porn.

    Ok, so I have had problems getting an erection or staying erect going back to early 2004. I am 37 years old now. Prior to 2004 I would get erect for sex with no problem, having an erection and being ready to go was never a issue. These days, I watch porn and masturbate to it or to pictures on profiles on swinger websites) maybe 4-5 days a week. But I sit there for an hour at a time, 2-3 hours at a time, in between taking breaks, but then going back to it. The invention of Porn Tube Channels has not helped at all.

    But here is the thing, prior to 2004 when I started having this problem, I was 30, and had been masturbating all the time for 15 years without an issue of erection( I started having sex at 20)……… But here is what I realised. AND GENTLEMAN PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS…… In early 2004 I installed boradband internet at my house. Within weeks I was in front of the monitor trying to find as much porn as I could and masturbating to it, finding pictures online, and masturbating to them. That was a new form of masturbating for me. Prior to that, my masturbating was regulated to watching a hot girl on television, or a steamy scene on a cable movie and masturbating. Running to the bathroom and masturbating. Or right here in the living room, a quick 2 minute pleasure………… But Broadband Internet introduced me to a new form of masturbation….Long drawn out episodes of masturbation. Clicking from one video to the next until one finally turned me on to the point of ejaculation….. At times 4-5 times a day, 4-5 days a week. Going through swinger websites, going through pictures on profiles, until it made me ejaculate…….. Guys, the past 7 years of this type of masturbation has RUINED my sex life………

    I am an attractive guy, good body, work out all the time…….I can not count the number of great looking women I have met the past 7 years that I have not been able to perform with. The latest being last Wednesday (10/26/11)….I met this great Asian girl, she came over. I stayed hard for a little bit, but it was gone within 5 minutes. And as I usually do when this happens, I jerk myself to get hard, but that takes a few minutes, and then when I entered her again, it didnt last 2 minutes. Needles to say, she was nice about it. But I have been texting her since that day, and I get very short non-personal replies………She was obviously disappointed…..

    As of late I have been confiding in friends about masturbation, and they all do it, and some say they do it all the time. But they have no problem getting erections when it comes to sex. It has obvisosly occurred to me that masturbating in front of the monitor to porn, pictures, is what is effecting my sex life and inability to get erections………

    I’m sure masturbating normally, maybe once a day, maybe twice a day, for a minute or two over time would have not affected my sex life and erections at all. But masturbating to internet porn and pictures really does cause you great harm………

    I remember last June. I was going to Dallas for a company outing. I knew a sales girl from a different branch. We exchanged sultry emails and text messages. So I did not masturbate for 3 days. I did Wednesday afternoon, then didn’t do anything until I would see her. Saturday night I went to her hotel. We were naked within 20 minutes, and heres the things. She blew me and got kind of hard, but I jerked myself to get hard. And when I entered her, I could just feel this incredible feeling I had not felt in years guys, years. I was staying hard and maneuvering her all over the place. It was freaking incredible. The only thing I could not control was as soon as she got on top of me I came almost instantly…But that’s when I realised how internet masturbating to porn really ***** you up big time.

    Needles to say, to this day I’m still masturbating to porn, I did it last night for almost 2 hours. I’m looking into getting professional help. But guys, you will read different things that masturbating is not directly linked to erectile dysfunction, and that might not be true. But it does not specify the different types of masturbating habits people have. That is something that is not studied.

    I’m 37 years old and have been addicted to masturbating to internet porn since 2004 when I first got Broadband internet, and that’s when my erectile dysfunction started. And I don’t believe the dysfunction come from a psychological block; My brain telling my penis that it can never be as good as the porn when I’m in bed with a girl so there is no point in getting hard. My problem and the problem of a lot of others is the excessive pulling and strain on the penis pretty much just wears your functions out…………..

  4. Broadband led to porn addiction
    From another forum:

    I am 37 years old. I started to masturbate at age 14 in 1988. I masturbated a lot through my teens, late 20’s. I kept a regular sex life. Not a ladies man where I was bedding women all the time. A couple of gf’s, a couple of one night stands a couple of escorts.

    I NEVER had a problem, getting an erection. On occasion I would rent porn movies at an adult book store, masturbate to them. Never had a problem getting an erection. In 2004 I installed broadband internet in my home (was 30 at the time). I soon was masturbating to all types of porn. Swinger websites with pictures of swinging couples. These would often be 45minute-1hr-2hr, 3-4 hr sessions. Taking breaks, and then going back to it. Ever since I have had broadband internet in my home and the quick access to porn.

    MY SEX LIFE HAS BEEN A COMPLETE DISASTER. It’s very very rare that I have a fulfilling sexual encounter. I did not realize that masturbating to porn was the problem this until a gentleman I e-mailed through a swingers website gave me some advice.

  5. Comment of forum member:

    I remember halfheartedly attempting to give up porn several times in the past before finding this site, and finding myself right back on the path towards it thanks to the temptation in every media outlet known to man. To think that as a youngster I used to have to make a conscious effort to find pictures of scantily clad women… now it’s difficult NOT to find them.

  6. Another comment on the evolution of porn

    I guess I have the same story as hundreds of you people.

    Began reading porn mags with my friends at age 12-13, then started buying videos a couple of months later. Had a TV on my room and used to stay up at night watching porn on cable. My parents knew nothing. At the same time my fantasies about girls started drifting away from romantic to sexual encounters. When I was 15-16 the Internet explosion happened and we all know what that meant. First we just had the dial-up and my parents monitored my use since it was expensive. Still managed to download hundreds of pictures that I kept on floppy discs. And there we go, broadband, P2P, Torrents, streaming etc etc

  7. Posted elsewhere on this site

    I wanted to mention that my own experience with online porn confirms your theories 100%.

    I first got really hooked on internet porn just about a year ago through a new form of porn called “hypno” videos. These videos are the most powerful of the powerful sex stimuli. They are clips of literally hundreds of the most intense scenes from porn videos, put to a soundtrack of pulsing techno music, sex sounds (moaning ect.), dirty talk, and printed words (usually shocking words – guilt or shame inducing words) flashed onto the screen.

    These sex scenes, shock-words, sex sounds and dirty talk are constantly changing, often at a really high rate of up to 2-3 images a SECOND! You can imagine the dopamine hits that come from this kind of novelty! It’s like 300 vaginas in a minute!

    When I first viewed this particularly pernicious form of porn I was so hooked that I spent the entire weekend masturbating, until I was completelt exhausted. Imagine that rat pressing the bar — that was me! No food, no personal hygene, little sleep….pathetic!

    This frightened me quite a bit, and upon finding YBOP I realized exactly why these hypno videos are so powerful — they are designed to take full advantage of brain chemistry/wiring/behavior. Thay are truly the crack cocaine of porn.

  8. Comment from Reddit

    I has been a porn addict of increasing severity for at least 15 years now, probably more like 20. The ill effects of it are horrible. First it was softcore porn magazines, then was hardcore ones as well as hardcore video tapes. Paralleling that was years downloading both soft and hardcore images off the internet. With the advent of P2P apps, I was able to get hardcore videos off the internet. First was smaller p2p apps, then Bittorrent. After that, direct download sites and blogs/sites that link to them. I once paid for a month of premium access on one DDL site and binged on porn like I never had before.

    Two things made my porn addiction much worse in 2008. For the first time I got a laptop, and I discovered porn tube sites. First it was [Site 1], then [Site 2], then [Site 3], [Site 4], [Site 5], [Site 6] and finally [Site 7] and [Site 8]. There are probably a few others I’ve forgotten. Porn tube sites, especially the big ones like [Site 8] are the crack cocaine of internet pornography. There is so much of it, and so much new content every day, every hour, every 10 minutes that I was able to find constant new stimulation.

    The laptop made things worse because it sits right next to my bed. It’s always there. No longer do I have to go downstairs or avoid housemates. I couldn’t sleep? Fire up some porn; fap. Wake up with a headache? Same. Wake up without a headache? Why not fap to porn anyway

  9. Comment from Psychology Today
    YankieWankie has commented on: “The Sky Is Not Falling”

    Subject: Escalation and desensitization

    For the purposes of this comment, I’ll take issue with just one of Dr. Ley’s theses: “If someone watches porn showing something they find distasteful, it has no impact on their behavior or desires”. I feel fairly confident in positing that most men who have viewed porn over the course of years or decades have seen their tastes (desires) escalate from ordinary to repulsive as they have become habituated to successively higher levels of stimuli. I myself went from looking at centerfolds in the early nineties, to hardcore magazines, to hardcore VHS, and then came the internet and I went back to still images for awhile, then downloadable video, then highspeed streaming video. As I progressed from still images to video, still images just didn’t “work” on my libido anymore. To some extent, having given up porn entirely, still images are still somewhat ineffective at arousing me–and I believe that’s regrettable. I want some of the “innocence” back that I gave up in order to look at shocking material.

    In terms of the content of what I watched, there came a time when I found myself looking at extreme group sex (50 men, one woman), a subject that at the start of my experience with porn would have repulsed me. Yet at the end, I had to feel that revulsion in order to become aroused. I believe it only would have gotten worse if I hadn’t curtailed my use of porn entirely.

  10. Comment about need for novelty

    The interesting thing is that I open several windows in my browser, each one with many, many tabs. The main thing that arouses me is novelty. New faces, new bodies, new “choices”. I very rarely even watch a whole porn scene, and can’t remember when I saw entire movie. It’s too boring. I always want NEW stuff.

  11. posted of reddit.com NoFap
    LINK

    Our minds have been evolving for thousands of years. The advent of Internet based porn is a technology that our minds did not evolve to handle. Men evolved to be attracted to youth, beauty, and subtle signs of fertility. Before large cities emerged in recent times and the creation of mass media; television, billboards, magazines, the Internet, people would only see a limited amount of other people. A man may only see a few 7-8/10s in his day to day life.

    The brain is not evolved to process 30 tabs of beautiful women with perfect breasts who attempt to look healthy and youthful who are naked and posing for you, or getting fucked. Brain evolved to find average women sexually arousing. Porn takes everything your brain already finds arousing, amplifies it by 100%, then you go and open 30 tabs of it without realising that doing this has serious consequences.

    So yeah, finding Playboy attractive should come pretty naturally. And the only conspiracy at play here is that our brains are not evolved to deal with porn. Its too much stimulus.

    Finding average women attractive: Good.

    30 tabs of incredibly hot women getting banged: Bad.

    Markets supplying to the demand: Expected.

  12. porn is about the hunt – posted on another site

    Porn addiction is not all about the release of sexual energy, for me at least. It was about the hunt. And of course the repressed society adds guilt and this adds more of a “high”, for the lack of a better term, to a porn addict. There were times in my life where I would spend 4 hours stroking my dick, looking for a perfect image starting with artsy stuff like x-art or met-art pics to end up with bestiality or shemale video, then cum, take a nap and repeat the process.

    You may not understand it, and it’s great that you have a good relationship with porn but don’t presume that everyone is like you. Just like we shouldn’t presume to understand people who become so obese that they become grafted to their couches. Porn is my poison, moderation hasn’t worked out for me yet so it’s abstinence for me for a few months, then I’ll try to masturbate without porn just to disassociate the two, then maybe moderation might be the way to go.

     

  13. comment from a forum

    At 45, I’m glad I’m not doing this at 21. I did not have my mind programmed at a young age by Internet porn, which is categorically different from old-school porn due to the endless novelty available.

    During my first sexual experiences (masturbation) I was often fantasizing about girls I actually knew, not watching explicit videos of ever more intense hardcore porn scenes.

     I think my reboot from 7 years of porn addiction is easier for me than it is for a 21 year old who is rebooting from 7 years of porn addiction plus hardwiring that occurred while his brain was still forming. I have a distinct memory of a time when my brain did not think sex = porn. My brain has a place to go back to.

    I do regret losing 7 years of my life to porn addiction and depression. But I know that some guys have a much tougher path out of the porn pit than I do.

  14. Thread on tabs

    GUY A:
    Does anyone else here masturbate with multiple browser windows open? I’ll usually open somewhere between 2-4 with different videos or images. Sometimes I just can’t decide who I want to finish with…

    GUY B:
    Yup, I’m the exact same. Always thinking I’ll find a better video to finish with.

    GUY C:
    Same here!!!
    I always want to get even better pics or vids for the big finish

  15. Important information every

    Important information every NF’er should be aware of – big difference between blowing load and watching porn.

    I had a major porn binge 2 days ago which lasted almost 4 hours… going to all my old favourite sites. Good thing was I didn’t fap so I kept my energy, but by doing that it all the more emphasised how the rush of dopamine affects your system. Looking at the porn I could literally feel it as a trickle of warm fluid being released from the top of my brain. It made me high like a drug. The next day I felt pretty much exactly how one feels after a night of hard drug use. (E, coke) ie wanting to shut myself away from the world. Trust me I know.

    Its insane how the irresponsible manipulation of the brains dopamine levels effects us. I had no idea of this until I read YBOP. I’m very grateful and directly experienced the feeling. Most guys are just totally unconscious of this.

    The day after my porn binge I was almost suicidal… now my dopamine is reset I feel happy again.

    How many chronic PMO abusers mistakenly pin their depression on external factors in their life? Whilst believing that their daily fap helps relax them?

    Both Porn and Masturbation have their own unique negative effects every NF’er should clearly distinguish. They’re two separate ball games in fact. Fapping without porn leaves you depleted of energy and motivation for a day, Porn without fapping leaves you desperate for higher stimulation/novelty. Obviously combining the two you get a double dose of suckage.

  16. Hentai

    Is anyone here having problems with hentai (anime porn) along with/instead of porn? If so, let’s make a deal. I’ll tell you my story and you tell me yours.

    God bless Hayao Miyazaki for introducing me to anime. But God damn Fakku for introducing me to hentai. I am 15 years old and going to be a junior in high school. In middle school, I was addicted to video games, which led to me being socially awkward. I started fapping around 13 or 14, when I discovered that watching videos of sexy anime girls on YouTube. Being a horny teenager going through puberty, I soon wanted more. I began to look up “insert anime chick’s name here naked” and other stuff like that. Eventually, it led me to this piece-of-shit (although I didn’t know it at the time) website called Fakku. This gave me my first exposure to any kind of porn.

    At first, I thought it was all good. Hentai made me feel good, the “girls” there made me feel less lonely (I wanted a girlfriend around that time), and my parents didn’t have to know a thing about it. Problem was, it escalated. And it escalated at almost the exact same time that I got my first girlfriend. She was (and still is) really nice, and she (I feel like puking saying this now because I never realized it until the relationship was over) almost had the looks of many of the girls in the hentai I read; she just didn’t show it that much. So we went on a few dates. By this time, I had a reputation for being clumsy and overreacting a lot. But she dated me anyway, probably becaus she was in her first relationship as well and didn’t really realize what I was (but neither did I).

    GUY A:

    Hentai has always been a soft spot for me because it broke the boundaries of extremes that normal porn can offer in terms of torture. next to hentai only stories could proceed that far without it becoming just plain murder, which in my view isn’t in any kind sexual even if the death is the result of bdsm. but without death, the limitless and unrealistic torture was one of the few things that could get me to highs of arousal where i’d lose myself completely for as much time as i was able to spend on it.

    bad, bad times…..

    GUY B:

    I have a friend who is obsessed with hentai. He’s got a 5000+ image collection. It’s sickening. He talks about it in fucking public and to women he’s trying to “flirt” with. He says that because of hentai, he has a unrealistic ideal of women. He’s into everything, even the more creepy stuff.

    GUY C:

    Hentai caused lot of pain to me when I was young.

    We used to “trade” movies (mostly not porn) with friends because the size was just too big for downloading from internet in decent quality. However NOBODY really nobody got hentai so I was forced unwillingly to download them from internet on my own! Omg it sucked so hard, 550MB of endless pain on dial-up.

    GUY D:

     I wish I could help more, but I have the same problem (hentai) and can only say that if you really like anime, hentai is the worst possible thing to pervert how the characters and the stories feel to you. If you’re on hentai sites for novel stories, you know it’s a boredom problem alone, which the community can help you conquer. (Working out and getting away from the computer helps a lot.)

    GUY E:

    Wow this sounds familiar. Shota was how I got off a few years ago. First time I saw hentai was in 5th grade, and after I got home from school I would just go in my room and stare at it. I didn’t know how to do anything like masturbate but all I knew was that I liked watching this stuff. Shit fucked with my head. All through that year, I kept seeing more and more fucked up shit, and I’d take breaks from watching it for like a month when I saw something too bad. It really fucks with a kid’s mind to see Raven from Teen Titans fighting slade on saturday morning and then seeing her get raped by him 4 hours later. That, and I started getting into that bondage shit. Monster rape and needles in obscure places really made me a perverted monster all through middle school. I never really gave it up til about 3 or 4 months ago when I started nofap for the first time. I used to just go on stumbleupon and cycle through every picture fapping. I first realized I had a fapping problem when I noticed I was getting into futanari. That was my porn tastes getting more ridiculous and was my first sign of an addiction.

    But this is the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time. I like being sober from fapping. Remember bro, this isn’t a sprint you run alone. It’s a marathon with all of us right beside you cheering you on. Good luck, and don’t be a slave to impulse.

  17. From another forum – age 38

    I’m probably older than most in here (38).

    I was probably in the ideal/worst situation when porn was transitioning to video tape in the early 80’s. Moving video used to be very tough to get a hold of. My best friend’s dad was the neighborhood guy who distributed porn before it was readily available for renting in the local mom and pop video stores that came along before Block Buster and all the corporate run video chains.

    I was nine years old when I was shown my first porn vid. Plus my friend and I had access to the stash. It was the equivalent to having access to Internet porn back in the day with no parent to stop you.

    I had seen porn mags before that age between the ages of five – seven.

    30 years later, basically, I don’t think it is a good thing to have the access that we have to porn then or now. It is probably way worse now because if you have children it is very difficult to shelter them from it. You can do what you can in your own home, but that’s not going to stop anything.

    I think fantasies should be left to behind closed doors and in your own head; people need to see that stuff acted out. It probably is not healthy for you to view it.

    Even for my own relationships, I think having all this stuff basically planted in my head hasn’t been a good thing. I’ve never been married (although I could have once) and subconsciously – or even consciously – I’m I am always searching for a girl that is better than the last one in the bedroom. Also, watching this stuff over the years, doesn’t exactly make you want to settle. It would almost be like if you saw a porn chick and you were not allowed to watch any other chick. Maybe that is part of being a guy, but personally, I don’t need the help of the porn industry to act out this stuff that they have planted into my head.

    Most people would praise monogamy, but watching this stuff brainwashes you into not being like that. It’s a case of monkey see, monkey do.

  18. Affecting college

    Serious Consequences from Porn

    Besides relationship problems, a huge amount of time wasted, and all the other common addict problems, has anyone had any very serious problems in their carreer or at University / College? I’m asking because I’m going to be a college dropout this year and porn has played a great part in it… I didn’t study enough (lack of motivation, depression, so much time wasted on pointless web browsing) that next year I won’t be allowed to enrolle back in college… this is very serious and a life changer for the worst reason. More depressed feelings are in the post and when they arrive… I don’t know what to do!

  19. How Often Did You Fap Before Starting?

    How Often Did You Fap Before Starting?

    At least once a day. Depending on the day, as much as 3 or 4 times. Once or twice was normal.

    The problem is, I did marathon sessions. it was a game to me, to see how long I could go. I’d keep myself on the edge for over an hour, switching porn sites and genres, reading erotic fiction, long vids, etc.

    Should have been obvious that i was desensitizing myself. Oh well. 3 days and counting.

  20. My parents knew, but never talked about to me about my habits

    My parents knew, but never talked about to me about my habits

    GUY 1) I was caught a couple of times by my parents, and they believe that pornography and all that is wrong. Instead of talking about it or doing anything, they just mildly let me know that they knew.

    This taught me that I just had to be sneakier with it.

     I wish they had sat me down, or reached out when I was getting old enough. I have kept so much of it in the dark because it was easier that way. I am sick of it.

    GUY 2 ANSWERS: Your parents may think porn is wrong, but I would be surprised if they knew that high-speed internet porn can create arousal addiction, and that the addiction can cause many devastating symptoms.

    The effects of habitual high-speed internet porn use are only now starting to come to the forefront since residential high-speed internet has only been prevalent for the last 10-12 years or so.

    I would guess that many parents view internet porn as just a digital version of Playboy. They may want you to avoid it but figure it’s just a natural phase that a young person will go through.

    So I don’t blame parents for not teaching us (although I respect that your specific circumstances may be different). Most probably don’t know anything about this issue.

  21. Perverted, Horny Bastard Addicted to Porn, Day 3 And Counting…

    Perverted, Horny Bastard Addicted to Porn, Day 3 And Counting…

    I never realized I had a problem until I stumbled upon yourbrainonporn.com. Experiencing all classic symptoms: desensitization, progressively kinkier tastes, soft erections (is this an oxymoron?), plummeting libido, etc. I’ve been on a wild goose chase to resolve sexual issues for years trying all kinds of medication, therapy, self-help, accupuncture, etc. but never attributed it to porn. ATM, DP, FF…the kinkier, the better. In fact, regular porn has become dull. After the battle I’ve been fighting, getting off porn and no fapping almost seems like too simple of a solution. But this all totally resonates with me. I’ve got a long-road and am fighting the cravings. Funny, I don’t know what to do with my computer anymore? Anyway, I’m glad to be here now.

  22. From reddit – NoFap

    LINK

    I think it is a result of the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. For a long time in this country, sex before marriage, and any kind of non-procreative sex, was considered sinful and evil. Then along comes the “sexual revolution”, and sexual freedom becomes a way to rebel against the mainstream.

    Flash foward thirty years and those hippies bangin’ in the mud at Woodstock are parents, business owners, politicians, etc. Sexual freedom becomes mainstream, and nothing is considered taboo. Then eventually their children, little Johnny and Lisa start being sexually active at 12, and it burns when Johnny pees and Lisa has warts on her nether regions. (straight/”normal”) People start to freak out about AIDS. Masturbation begins being promoted as a safe alternative to sex. “Pornography” at this time is little more than Playboy, maybe some softcore stuff on cable access, but for the majority of boys the only way to get that excitement is to pause your VCR at JUST THE RIGHT TIME (remember that?? Holy shit!! Just thought of it while typing this).

    Pornography – after a very important Supreme Court ruling – is totally protected by the First Amendment, unless its rape or kiddie porn or something. Now you have people who hate porn, but take the “I don’t like what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” mentality, seeing any attempt to infringe pornography as “Un-American”/regressive/repressive/reactionary. Hell, even feminists have begun to say that porn can be empowering for women (and even the pornstars).

    However, nobody thinks ahead to the mid to late 2000’s, when Johnny and Lisa can access every disgusting fetish and -philia in High Definition in a nanosecond with high speed internet access (Oh man… remember waiting like 5 minutes for a single PICTURE to download in the late 90’s??? Damn, writing this is taking me BACK!). Hell, today most MIDDLE SCHOOLERS can access every sick twisted fetish that has ever existed in seconds with a device that they can fit in their fucking pocket.

    A lot of “good” intentions gone wrong. Principles that exist in a vacuum don’t always make sense in the real world, and technology changes things. People start believing things in a herd, and anyone who questions conventional wisdom is vilified. Doctors hate admitting they are wrong and resist contradictory evidence until dragged kicking and screaming to the truth. Not to mention pornography is one of America’s biggest export and is a multi-billion dollar a year industry (boggles my mind that anyone pays for porn, but to each his own).

    And there you have it. Sorry to be so long winded but your post got me thinking!

  23. It’s amazing how porn has desensitized us

    GUY 1) It’s amazing how porn has desensitized us. My extreme porn addiction started around 19. But between the ages of 14-19, I use to get erections nearly by all type of women, skinny, busty, average. Heck, once my teacher at school when I was 17 showed some cleavage and I had an erection for 2 hours and even old women sometimes turned me on. I have not been excited by a woman in real life since 19 and I am now 23. I hope I can get that feeling again, LINK

    GUY 2) Same here. Its hilarious the things I used to get turned on by. Average looking 40 year old women with nipples showing through their shirt, for example.
    Now, I could have my favorite type of girl butt-naked touching me and not get turned on.
    Its so absurd all you can do is laugh

    GUY 3) This. No porn does not lower standards, but the opposite way around. Watching (too much) porn increases your standard with as a results that no normal woman is good enough for you to make a move.

    GUY 4) Before reboot, a woman can be hot but one imperfect feature will be enough for you to dismiss her as being “not hot”. During reboot, I’m finding that a woman can have an imperfect feature but a nice ass/body/rack/smile/face/personality/etc. is enough to wipe the imperfection out.

    It’s definitely my favorite part of the reboot to go out and about and realize that the women are more attractive than before. Funny how not emptying your balls puts a layer of an unknown species of make up on a women’s face that causes them glow.

    GUY 5) Not watching porn brings you back to reality.

    None of us are perfect and all of us have physical faults. Going without porn makes us more accepting of all those imperfections and more content as people rather than chasing perfection that does not exist in the real world.

    GUY 6) So… it’s been my experience that the longer I go without porn, the more I find myself noticing women I wouldn’t have even considered before.

    GUY 7) I think porn and even pics give unrealistic perceptions of women. They can get rid of the extra fat here and there and everywhere and the girl ends up looking like a bonafide model. REal women are so much better!

     

  24. Porn and hyperreality

    LINK – Porn and hyperreality

    I just thought I’d share some thoughts about why P and M can be so psychologically damaging in the long-term, and why I think that heavy users experience such anxiety in real sexual experiences.

    Of all the possible reasons for me to embark on NoFap, one of the most significant has to do with the way that porn twists my (and probably your) perception and expectations of reality. I found that not only was my body conditioned to be aroused by images and video rather than the real tactile contact of a partner, but that, psychologically, my expectations regarding sex were so skewed that I was seriously disappointed in the real thing. Porn presents an artificial, distilled sexual experience, and encourages us to identify with the subjects thereof, and over time this identification commandeers our libido. Over the course of a long-term addiction, porn use creates a sense of depersonalization regarding sexual experience, which reduces the desire for real partners who do not resemble those found in porn, and creates disappointment when our experience does not compare to that found in porn. This happens unconsciously, and if you’re addicted, chances are that you are not even aware of it. Porn is a substitute for reality, but it’s an effective one: every detail is designed to arouse, tailor-made to feed your sex-related dopamine circuits.

    Moreover, porn is anxiety-free. There is no risk involved in opening up some images or videos. No chance of rejection, no demands on your part to say or do the right thing. I think that this is the reason why so many heavy porn users feel such anxiety when talking to women, or when in a real sexual experience – we are used to simply receiving such rewards with little to no work, and therefore we have built up no tolerance to the risk and anxiety which naturally come with it. P and M are easy and undemanding, and provide us with gratification quickly and efficiently.

    This is their true danger – their ability to twist our perceptions of reality and to make us unsuitable for real partners. Only by leaving porn and masturbation behind can we reclaim our libidos for the real world, and discover the rewards of the possibilities around us.

    GUY 2)

    Another example of hyper reality is being able to skip around. The ability to jump around caused actual sex to be much the same. A short moment here a short moment there, and I am talking about with a partner. Totally made sex feel like a chore. Then instead of being in the moment, in my head I would “pull myself out of my body” and watch myself. Rather have images of porn going through my head of what that position looked like all those countless times I had watched it. So ya, porn fks with reality.

    GUY 3)

    Porn has precisely altered my reality. I think I am lucky that I haven’t gone over excessive, although I stuck with it regularly. Somehow, I think I have a case of oneitis, which has in some way kept me sane and somewhat interested in finding the one partner… But it’s a serious problem which I am tackling now to fix for good.

     GUY 4)

    I remember reading an article which discussed how those who were exposed to porn as their first sexual experience are far worse off than those who had real sexual experiences when they were young. Although porn can be damaging for everyone, it’s worse for those who were first introduced to sex via pornographic videos.

     GUY 5)

    agreed. i think researchers and therapists really need to start taking pornography addiction seriously in a larger social context. the turn-over rate for actress alone should have sparked debate, but we all know both actress and audience are suffering from porn-induced neurological problems that distorts reality and cripples lives.

     GUY 6)

    Porn makes real sex less enticing, NOT because the girls in the videos are theoretically 10’s and your partner is a theoretical 6. It has more so to do with the sheer amount of content broadband internet can provide.

    We can afford to be infinity picky and only view the most exciting scenes by skipping around and searching for very specific genres.

    Do you really think that even if a porn addict did have an opportunity to have sex with one porn star that the experience be JUST as arousing as internet porn? Of course not. In this scenario, you wouldn’t be able to click to the next porn star when you’re bored of her.

  25. A cautionary tale from someone about to turn 30

    LINK-A cautionary tale from someone about to turn 30

    Hi,

    I discovered NoFap just a few days ago, after stumbling upon the TedX talk. Anyone who may be be unsure about NoFap: Heed my cautionary tale.

    In a few months I’ll be turning 30. I’ve been addicted to PMO for about 10 years. Each year my PMO addiction worsened, my life got suckier.

    From a young age I fapped. I fapped even before I really understood what I was doing. But because I’m old(ish) I didn’t have a high speed internet connection as a teenager. I had dial up until I was about 20. And even when the early high speed connections came along, there wasn’t the vast vast amounts of free, extreme porn that is available today.

    But I digress…

    In a 7th grade I finished with straight A’s in school, and was made dux of my school.

    By the time high school ended, I had failed a couple of subjects, and barely passed the rest.

    When I think back to my life at age ~20, I had a curious confidence about me. Despite the fact that I was very very skinny, I stuttered, I was a bit short, and never had a dollar to my name – I had at least half a dozen girlfriends between the ages of 19 – 23. I had a certain ‘happy-go-lucky’ attitude. I wanted intelligent, creative, nice women. I didn’t really care about cup size.

    Of course back then, my PMO addiction was only just beginning to come about.

    At age 20 I wrote a novel (being a writer is my life’s dream) – it was shit, but hey I wrote a novel. I also drew, wrote songs, played in bands…

    But things got worse. My PMO increased (although I didn’t realise I had a PMO addiction, or that such a thing existed). Not a single one of those relationships worked out. The sex was usually terrible at first because of ED, then they got OK for maybe a month, and then they always went sour after that.

    But no doubt you’re sensing a pattern of decline here.

    By the time I was 23 I had dropped out of uni. Twice. I had no girlfriend, no degree, a dead end part-time job I hated, and I was probably a borderline alcoholic.

    Over the next 7 or so years things just got worse. I went three years without so much as a kiss. Three years, not even a kiss from a girl. I never went back to uni. I never found a good job. I hated going out. I would look at girls with a weird kind of anger and hatred. It hurt me that I couldn’t have all of them, whenever I wanted.

    I craved intimacy less, but extreme sex more. I wanted a blonde fake-titted bimbo that’d let me… well, I won’t go into details.

    I started fapping to more extreme porn. Things got worse. I became weird and reclusive. My stuttering got worse. My life was an absolute mess. I was so lonely, but I never once made an effort to meet anyone new. Any minor opportunity that came with a girl (very rare) I blew due to severe social anxiety.

    All this time I blamed everything I could – my heavy alcohol drinking, the city in which I lived, my insular group of friends. Bad luck. But all that time, ticking along in the background, getting worse and worse, was my PMO addiction.

    Finally things got so bad I just had to get out of there. So at age 26 I went backpacking around Europe for 4 months, on a shoestring budget. I backpacked around Europe for 4 months without so much as a kiss from a girl. Outside of that it was a great experience: but I always felt like the weird reclusive one that didn’t belong. Girls seemed to treat me with a sense of caution. Like something wasn’t quite right about me. Paranoid, perhaps. Or maybe there really was something there.

    After several years of anger, loneliness, backpacking, and PMOing until my arm hurt – I met a girl. We had an awful 18 month relationship while I was living overseas. We virtually never had sex. It took several attempts before we actually successfully had intercourse. I blamed issues with anxiety. Which was in part true. But looking back.. yep, you guessed it: porn induced ED.

    So maybe she wasn’t my soul mate, but it could have at least been an OK relationship. Or something. Instead, I fapped constantly and never had sex with a girl who was there, ready and willing. Basically I made both our lives miserable.

    Now I am 29. I re-enroled in uni last year, and failed about 50% of my subjects. After taking six months off, I begged them to let me back in. I was on anti-depressants for about two years, but recently gave them up in favour of natural remedies. I started exercising, using light therapy, getting Omega 3’s and a bunch of other stuff – all of which helped.

    But there was something missing.

    I have no doubt that most of my sad story of decline is directly correlated to PMO addiction. At 29 years of age, I am in a worse position than when I was 20. I am still stupidly skinny, I still stutter, I am still flunking higher education and I still don’t have a dollar to my name. But to add insult to injury, I’m also old.

    As it turns out in about 90 days I will be turning 30. Just in time for a 90 day reboot.

    And I am at day 5!

    TL;DR — I am three months away from turning 30. I have fapped my life away. I have nothing: no degree, no money, no girlfriend, virtually no happiness.

    Don’t turn out like meDon’t turn out like me

  26. Couple of comments.

    Couple of comments.

    I’m early 40s, so I started masturbating in middle school before digital porn was readily available. My friends and I would get all excited to just snag a Playboy or Hustler magazine. We shared video porn and our dirty magazine stash with each other. But we didn’t become reliant on porn to masturbate.

    Since you’re in high school, sex is still relatively a new thing so of course you’re likely fapping a lot. What becomes dangerous is PMO and becoming reliant on digital porn, especially when it supersedes real physical relationships. I couldn’t tell from your post if porn is the issue or just heavy fapping.

    My takeaway from your post is that you’re fapping to release stress v. pure horniness. Sure, high school is stressful. College is stressful, A job/career is stressful. Having a family is stressful. The stress doesn’t end, especially in this digital age. But fapping/PMO shouldn’t become a habit for stress release or escaping. I, personally, became reliant on PMO not only as a stress release, but when I am bored. It just became a habit–and my personal relationships have suffered. Everything has an opportunity cost.

    The more time you spend fapping/PMOing, the less time, desire, etc. you have for real human sexual relationships. My advice, fap when you are horny. Don’t use porn. Focus on real sexual relationships with girls and don’t become reliant on fapping to take the place of girls. Everything in moderation. If you are fapping 4-5 times a day, that’s a big time and energy drain. Ask yourself if you are really horny and need to fap…or are you just bored or stressed.

  27. Are you implying that the
    Are you implying that the people who said that were into child pornography?

    I doubt he’s implying that, but even if he is, you’re missing the primary point of his post. Which is basically this: Given enough exposure to porn in combination with time our novelty seeking mechanism will make even the most vanilla heterosexual jerk off to the wierdest, most depraved shit unimaginable.

    In my case women being strangled. Now, I’m 60 days into reboot with over 20 days since my last relapse (3 in total) and yet I STILL LOVE THAT SHIT. Intellectually I know it’s fucked up but my messed up limbic system does not give a flying fuck. It knows what it likes and what it likes is to watch chicks struggling while being strangled to death. Ideally while being simultaneously raped. I fervently hope that with time my sexual response to such sick stimuli will wane. Right now I still love it.

    Or japanese chicks smearing shit on themselves anyone? Not to my personal tastes but you stumble across that … ah … shit all the time. Clearly the being-fucked-while-covered-in-human-excrement community is a big one.

    Or vomiting?

    Or anorexic girls?

    Or children?

    Or fucking babies?

    This is why the alarm is being sounded. The path from sexual normal (i.e. consensual sex between individuals or groups of indivduals) to sexual abnormal (where people are non-consensually hurt or humiliated) is a long one and up until recently – with the rare exception of notorious kings or emperors – it’s generally taken a lifetime of depravity to get there; with the endless flood of internet porn available now however, it can now take a few years, perhaps mere months in some extreme cases.

    That’s what he’s saying.

    Plus, let’s be blunt, it is extremely likely that some of the posters here are hooked on illegal material. All I have to say about that is well fucking done for finding your way here and work your ass off to overcome your addiction. Plenty here are cheering for you.

    LINK to thread: Your lowest point? (ROCK-BOTTOM) [TRIGGER WARNING]

  28.  My boyfriend mentioned not

     My boyfriend mentioned not too long ago that he “feels bad” if we do doggie style or some other position that I’m not facing him alot. He feels like it is objectifying me. We have shower sex a lot (it’s our favorite) so we have tried starting off in the bedroom or living room and ending up in the shower so we can use a variety of positions. I would say he has learned a lot from sex through porn, but doesn’t mean he “objectifies” me when we have sex. The problem with him and porn is, he now has a bit of sex “ADD” where he can’t do one position for very long because he will get bored; a result of watching multiplie screens of porn on the computer.

    LINK to thread

  29. Porn as Hyper-Reality

    Porn as Hyper-Reality

    Original Poster:

    Hyper-reality, the state of social evolution when the image of life holds more importance than life itself. you’ve seen it everywhere – from reality TV and the news media’s constant reporting of reality TV blurring the lines of what social behavior is, to the facebook which we are forced to interact EVEN OUTSIDE facebook with the same inaccurate profile images of our own lives and the lives of our friend, family, and co-workers.

    But the largest example of hyper-reality by far is pornography. it’s sexuality, one of life’s most intimate and sensory encompassing actions, being infinitely reduced to a virtual experience devoid of any sense beyond sight and sound. in pornography, you are not having sex with a partner or porn star, and you are not having sex with yourself; you are running a socially-conditioned simulation of an ideal of sex, a knowingly unobtainable object of desire that you virtually become attached to until you are satisfied, after which you are sucked back into the “unsatisfactory” reality of being naked in a room, alone.

    Here’s a crash course in hyper-realism, brought to you by rick Roderick and jean baudrillard, if anyone’s interested. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U9WMftV40c hope this helps the people who are turned on to it (pun intended). good luck everyone.

    GUY 2)

    Porn was many of our first sexual experiences, and so we have based our sexual expectations on those standards. but porn is an image, a substitute, for the real thing. so when the time came to be intimate with a real person, our sexual expectations were based on a symbol which was fantastical and disconnected from reality. often that’s the point of porn; i.e. achieving multiple orgasms every time, hyper-sexualized female partners, cartoonishly sized sex organs, bizarre toys, etc. This “virtuality” of porn allows you to stay emotionally detached via several degrees of symbolic separation.

    The real thing is much more complicated, and is a much more vulnerable social experience. This realness causes confusion and extreme self-awareness stemming from the shock of dealing with a reality you suddenly realize you have no reliable information on, despite “studying” the symbols. When presented with the real thing, the floor falls out underneath the simulacrum, and you’re left with a case of ED and a profound lack of confidence. Shit sucks man.

    Watched the TEDx lecture last week and decided enough was enough. I’m tired of feeding myself bullshit symbols because its easier. I’m tired of being separated from my sexuality by layers of false symbols and real physical dopamine addiction (this legitimately scares me). I’m just tired of being that person.

    GUY 3)

    I have been pondering this recently, too. In nightclubs, I often notice people spending more time taking pictures of themselves and their friends than they do actually participating in the experience. They hungrily hoard these trophy images as existential commodities to be exchanged in social media. Reality becomes mediated through the prism of manufactured experience. Interesting stuff.

    GUY 4)

    Yeah, I think that nowadays all our interactions are ‘prefiltered’ through TV and media so our expectations are wildly divergent from reality. Ever been to a party that’s been like the ones on TV? But how much would you rather be at one of those than the shitty ones you mostly end up at?

    But yet there’s probably lots of interesting real people out there. There’s also something like a ‘fetishization’ of lifestyle and enjoyment, so we’re forced to expect that our lives ‘should’ be about enjoyment, and that the way to this is to cultivate our tastes and what we do endlessly – everything has to be carefully planned to provide the maximum enjoyment, which of course doesn’t sound that fun to me if it’s so overwrought.

    GUY 5)

    I think the quality that makes it porn is that its voyeuristic. You aren’t participating in the act, but you’re still getting off on it. You get the sights and sounds, but you don’t get the smells or the touches (your hand doesn’t count). It’s totally impersonal.

    It’s something you desire, and it’s a substitute for a taboo or something you think you can’t readily get, whether it be a more attractive partner, a particular kink, or just sex in general. Porn becomes a symbol of sexual frustration or dissatisfaction, and as long as you cling to it as a source of sexual gratification, you aren’t being healthy.

    Idk, maybe it’s like cigarettes and some people can handle just a few, but I think most people find that just a few leads to an addiction eventually. Your mind forms bonds between those things. Your brain just interprets code, and when you have pleasure, it takes note on how to get there again. It sees the pattern of dissatisfaction-resignation-pleasure-shame, and thinks that that is the typical pattern after enough repetitions. You bring that into the bedroom with a partner and it doesn’t end well.

    It doesn’t matter if your partner is good or not, it’s about how your brain grows into self-defeating thought patterns.

  30. Anyone noticed how drastically world changed in last few decades

    Anyone noticed how drastically world changed in last few decades ?

    I’m wondering, how many PMO addicts were there, before sexual revolution. Before first magazines. How many heart diseases before food modifications. How many depressions before removal our touch 100% wild nature air. And sun. How many lung cancers before cigarettes.

    THE thing is to realize, that world is changing just too fast. In last 100 years we changed probably much more, than in last 1000+ years. And here is the schema:

    1) Exciting, but bad in long-term behavior is introduced for money, or just for evil

    2) People get hooked

    3) Precise, scientifically backed-up research took decades to kick-in

    4) Hooked-up people start to get educated

    5) Starting behavior elimination

    Problem is that this whole cycle to damaging. Cigarettes were (widely) introduced early 20th century. It may take few decades to completely ban. We now know, that certain types of foods are harmful. Yet, in that case we are still in phase 2-3. Guess where we are with pornography ? Lots of scientific research is just few years old.

    The thing is, in future we will look at pornography like we do on cigarettes — soo good short term (1 minute). Soo bad long term (80 years, or whatever your life expectancy is). So, be early adopter. Do something, that everyone wil do in maybe 80 or 100 years right now. Start abstaining – now.

    I wish you good luck

    P.S: To pussy chasers – since it probably is better than PMO, before contraception (=what we are used to) and 1960 sexual revolution, in advanced/western society sex was largely connected to married couples (social view on children outside marriage was good enough motivation not to fulfill urge with sex). So, sex was also more rare (and therefore precious, and therefore better) than today. Moreover, too much sex can be result of today world ads and media approach

    TL;DR — One day, we will ban pornography same as we will ban cigarettes and junk food (cigarettes ban is real in future – see Scandinavia, Australia,…Few countries (in EU at least) have junk food tax, etc.)

    GUY 2)

    I was always kinda in to computers. I’m sure most of us on nofap are, so I knew how to find porn online and got addicted before facebook, YouTube, social media, webcam,etc. I has taken me 10+ years of social anxiety, ED, and other health issues to see the truth. The Internet in the last couple of years has exploded, and I fear there are/will be millions of new addicts. More depressed and medicated because they don’t know why.

  31. from reddit nofap –

    The thing about porn is that you don’t even need to be horny, you just need to be bored. The porn will make you horny.

    So don’t let yourself be bored! Isn’t there something you’d rather be doing than making yourself feel bad anyway?

  32. erection as barometer- from reddit

    Think back to your PMO days: if you were browsing porn, and for whatever reason your erection starts dying down, what’s your first thought? “I haven’t orgasmed yet! Gotta get it back up!!” Which in turn leads to more hardcore porn and harder rubbing/jackingoff. Why? Because the focus is on the erection. Your mind is clouded with thoughts of your own erection & orgasm. Over time, we feel even an ’embarrassment’ to not be able to get off to softcore porn, so we dig deeper and deeper for the hardcore. In summary: the glow of the moment depends solely on your erection – if the erection goes away, so does the manly feeling.

  33. realized now just how much the media and porn has affected

    • I’ve realized now just how much the media and porn has affected people’s self images. It’s pretty funny to see guys complaining on the internet about how they think their 7 inch dicks just won’t get the job done. Or about how everything thinks they need to be a ripped porno style hunk to get chicks. How instead of doing interesting hobbies that they enjoy, people try and get buff to impress other people. (Side note: if you enjoy going to the gym keep doing it, it’ll definitely help a little bit with chicks, but who cares about some ripped guy who isn’t interesting? As long as you’re decently in shape it really shouldn’t matter too much)So get off the internet. Stay away from the media.
    • Think about for a second for just how many people these days are playing video games and constantly jerking off instead of talking to women. All of these people who in previous generations would have had no problems, no social anxiety, nothing. They’d just do it. But instead, escapism has come to the point where no one has to care about it anymore. And a crazy ridiculous number of people seem to have this problem, too. I used to be this kind of person. But I realize now that talking to women isn’t rocket science. It’s meant to be spontaneous, awkward, whatever. There’s meant to be failure at times. That’s life. Just do it.
    • Speaking of the above I remember back to one of my roommates. He played video games(and likely PMO’d) pretty much any time he wasn’t in class and I remember him always asking my other roommate, “Did you find me a cute girlfriend yet?” Now really, what kind of an attitude is that?

    LINK TO THREAD

  34. Porn Isn’t Natural

    Porn Isn’t Natural

    I always get somewhat frustrated when skeptics of nofap, or porn supporters, will praise porn as part of a healthy sex life. I’ve also had these people tell me, “monogamy isn’t natural” As someone that supports monogamy, being raised around successful monogamous relationships, it hurts me to hear that. I’m not here, however, to preach about monogamy, or tell you how to live, but rather to discuss how porn isn’t natural.

    To say porn is natural is like saying McDonalds is healthy for our bodies. In fact, I think fast food is a perfect example to relate to porn. Two of our bodies biggest cravings are love and food, both of which have been exploited for profit in todays corrupt society; A society in which we are constantly being bombarded with various stimuli and addictive material. Junk/fast food is made for one purpose, to taste good. When you eat a salty, fatty, calorie filled meal, you crave more, even though it leaves you feeling awful after consumption.

    Porn does the same. We become victims of the corporations who feed our exploited senses more junk food and keep us coming back. It is not natural to to sit in a chair, staring at a bright screen that displays hundreds upon hundreds of females in various fantasies and circumstances. It is not natural to watch a video of woman being paid, and told what to do by producers as she’s forced to be ‘sexy’ in front of a camera with a strange guy, made to constantly keep himself hard, to film perfect angles and edit out the bad parts.

    I view my pornography, and other highly erotic material, addiction the same way an obese person views themselves after constantly indulging on fast food, baked goods, and junk food. I may not be overweight physically, but mentally, I am sexually obese. Some people are able to eat these foods, or view this material, on a non-consistent basis. They manage an un-natural, but pleasant, indulgence with moderation. This, to me, is like playing with fire. One stressful event could spiral your indulgences out of control; It happens all the time with alcohol, drugs,etc.

    The healthiest option will always be the hardest, and if there’s one thing that’s not common in today’s society, it’s giving up short-term pleasure for long-term. Eating fruits and vegetables, waking up early and running a few miles, and weight-lifting isn’t very fun at the start. After it becomes habitual, however, you become a stronger, healthier person; Free from addiction and possessing more self-control than the majority around you. The people I see that take the time to meet the right person, truly dedicating themselves to them, giving up selfish desires for intimacy, and constantly working on improving their relationship, tend to be the happiest in the long run.

    There are many things we do that are “not natural” in our current society, but like anything, some of them are healthy options, and others are not. Things like driving a car, wearing shoes, and electricity are not natural, but benefit us more than hurt us. I don’t think pornography would be on the healthy side.

    TLDR: Porn is not natural. Sitting in a chair, staring at a bright screen, viewing hundreds upon hundreds of ‘edited’ women, catered to your liking, is not natural. It’s the equivalent of junk food, and it will make you mentally obese if you continue to consume it in mass amounts.

  35. cumming inside a woman, is now considered a special fetish

    For me it is less about the looks of the women in porn, but more about the sex acts themselves. People younger than me who got their sex education from porn may think that some of these things are natural. Hell, even though I know that I shouldn’t want them all the time, I find myself thinking about doing these acts. Isn’t it weird that the most natural act of all, cumming inside a woman, is now considered a special fetish of its own?.

  36. Coworker JUST discovered porn at age 37…his life is crumbling
    Coworker JUST discovered porn at age 37…his life is crumbling before him. Masturbating in the company car while driving.

    Submitted by confinement84″ on Fri, 2012-08-31 

    Ya. I thought that title would get your attention. A coworker of mine is your typical construction worker. He had very little understanding or knowledge about computers so watching porn was out of the question without going to an old fashion porn store. A few months ago the company handed out new smart phones for Navigation to employees who did not already have one. It was only a matter of time before he discovered the magical world of porn. The other day he was driving down the road in a company car and masturbating on the highway WITH another coworker in the car. That is when you know you have problems.

    The life of porn is already destroying his relationship with his wife. He was in a screaming match with his wife over the phone at the job site talking about kicking her out of their house. One coworker chimed in and said ” go home make up with her and stick it in her butt” (sorry for the graphic wording.) My coworker responds with … ” I don’t even want to. I am bored of her. I rather go home and jack-off to porn.” LOL.

    He was 100% serious when he made that statement, you could see it in his face. When he said that I was immediately thinking that his porn addiction was killing his relationship. If only he knew. I wouldn’t dare preach to him about porn or reuniting.info as he would probably laugh in my face. I guess some people have to learn the hard way right? If at all.

  37. Many of us deal with this

    Many of us deal with this addiction. Its a huge time waster, and yes…like alcohol. Some people can get to a normal use of porn..ie 15-20 minutes, get off ,and go to bed. Others have to cut it off completely. The 15 minutes quickly turns into 4 hours just like the “only one” drink inevitiably turns into a binge. Find out where you are and act accordingly.

    (LINK)

  38. I’d say porn is “worse” than fapping

    Is fapping really the problem or is it the porn?

    I’d say porn is “worse” than fapping. Fapping is bad in many cicumstances too, but not almost exclusively as porn. Porn makes you not work for things in real life, or makes you work for disturbed things like constant new sexual kicks. Porn can make you feel like a passive on-looker to sex rather than an active participant. Porn makes you forget the beauty of normal female bodies. Porn makes every sexual field feel “done” and leads to sexual boredom etc.

  39. My friend masturbates like 10-15 times a day.
    Is fapping really the problem or is it the porn?

    My friend masturbates like 10-15 times a day. Not even exaggerating. He seriously has an addiction, but he thinks its normal. He also doesnt have internet access, so he never really gets to watch porn either. And he’s never had a problem keeping it up in bed. On the other hand, I can’t remember the last time I masturbated without looking at porn. But I might masturbate only 4-5 times a week on average. And I have tremendous issues staying hard. At first I thought it was nerves, but after getting more acclamated with sex, I actually found sex to be tiring and boring. Unless the girl was deepthroating me and telling me to choke her, I don’t really find sex to be all that great. I’m very desensitized to the female anatomy.

    So, I know its anecdotal, but those two infallible differences of our sex lives makes me think that porn is more detrimental than masturbation itself. I tried not fapping for 10 days before and that already made a big difference on how I viewed women, so I still think masturbation itself needs to be minimized. But maybe porn just really shuts off the the psychological part of your libido.

  40. I never had a problem until I got my first high internet conne

    Is fapping really the problem or is it the porn?

    I can really only speak for me personally, but my problem is porn. Or, to be more specific, internet porn is my problem. I turn 32 this year and have been fapping since I was 12 or 13. I never had a problem until I lived alone and got my first high-speed internet connection around the time I was 22. Yeah the internet was around back in the early and mid 90s, but not many people I know had it. Porn use was self-limiting. You had to hope someone’s dad or older brother left out a magazine or movie. When I went to college, the dorms had a T3 line, but those who lived in apartments had dial-up. Good luck downloading a video clip on that. You could go to an adult store and buy one, but even if you could get over the fact that someone might see you there, those tapes were expensive.

    So my porn use was limited by my money, time and shame. But when I got broadband, I could get endless amounts of new porn every day, anonymously, for free. And that was it.

    I never intend on watching porn again. I may fap again one day if I can unlink porn and fapping. If I fapped now, I know I would just be running through porn scenarios in my head.

  41. It’s the faulty connections

    It’s the faulty connections and associations that are the problem, in one sense. What the dopamine does is give a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. That’s not a problem in and of itself, but what happens is that this sense also takes away the desire, and more importantly, the drive to improve your situation.

    Porn diminishes your desire and drive to see sexual partners naked and engaging in erotic acts, while masturbation diminishes your desire for orgasm. The problem arises because your brain makes the association between PMO and the satisfaction of those desires, rather than associating the accomplishment of tangible things and finding sexual partners with the sense of satisfaction. The trouble is in falling into a holding pattern instead of seeking satisfaction in the outside world.

    Is fapping really the problem or is it the porn?

  42. I have tried both and come to

    I have tried both and come to the conclusion that porn was the problem for me. I still fap at least once a week, just never with porn. I find my results are the same, and im happy with them. No e.d., still horny all the time, my voice is different, less anxious around potential mates, more confident, etc

    Is fapping really the problem or is it the porn?

  43. Porn is worse, and I think

    Porn is worse, and I think fapping is fine except when porn is included. What I’m saying is our ancestors fapped, no doubt, but they probably did it much less then we do now with porn. With porn you can fap like crazy everyday if you want to! Without it, most guys hit a limit.

    So what I’m saying is 100 years ago, fapping was probably fine. Now, because of porn, its also become a problem.

    Is fapping really the problem or is it the porn?

  44. Hey guys, new member to the
    Hey guys, new member to the forums here. 

    I recently started up my reboot (day 20!) and plan on making a journal soon but I am wondering what are people’s thoughts on the extent of the problems caused by PMO.  For instance, I know for me it has caused real issues (ED, PE, loss of time doing better things, etc) but on average how bad do you think the affects of PMO are? 

    I am in my mid 20s and know for sure that nearly every single friend I have is a PMOer.. these things just come up in guy talk sometimes and I would say its weird to hear someone who doesn’t like porn.  So for the “non-addict” so to speak, do you think they too are experiencing problems?  Or if not, are they “destined” to face problems one day?

    GUY 2)

    It really is too early to tell the full extent of this problem. The birth of high speed internet is making this problem more widespread that would have ever been possible in the past. I myself am 21 and I didn’t have high speed internet until I was about 15-16. Kids today will have it from day 1 and will quickly become more technology savvy than their parents (I plan to hide porn from my children with the same vigour that I used to show when searching for my own porn 😉 I would say that these changes are only just starting to have a real affect and it will be years until we know the extent of the damage – or atleast have a better idea of it.

    The other significant point is that many people are addicted without having a clue that they have a problem. I will use myself as an example again – I was addicted to porn for years without knowing that I had a problem. I then spent about 6 months knowing i had a problem but not quite knowing what it was. I then disovered YBOP and everything clicked. This seems to be a similar theme amongst members and would suggest that there could be an untold number of sufferers who dont even know it yet.

    It may well be that we are an exclusive few. It may be that the problem is very small and only a very very small percentage of users suffer the problems that we have experienced. In my opinion it is much more likely that this problem is widespread and growing rapidly. Lack of knowledge and research, the ability to hide the addiction not only from the people who know you but also from yourself, and the relatively new birth of high speed internet suggest to me that this is a problem which will grow to the point where the public in general become aware of PMO addiction. Only then will we start to have an idea of the bigger picture.

    OP)

    I am wondering if anyone else has noticed possible symptoms in their friends after having learned about YBOP?  I’m not saying this as in witch hunt style speculation but I can think of things my buddies have mentioned that now scream of possible PMO addiction.  A few I’ve noticed (and when I say friends I am not just coding for myself, though I can include myself in some of these for sure!):

    1)  I have buddies that brag about how long they last.  I can think of at least a couple very good friends of mine who say they cannot orgasm at all during intercourse.  they laugh about it and suggest women love it because they can go so long… but they aren’t getting off at all..  seems like pretty shitty sex to me..

    2)  I know I have been guilty of PE a bunch of times and while I would never admit it to my friends, we have all joked about it and it seems that many guys can relate to this problem when its being laughed about.

    3)  I know a couple of guys who cannot use public stalls… WTF??  Not saying this is from PMO by any means, but I have seen people on this forum and similar ones talk about this..  strange if you ask me.

    4)  And for me THE NUMBNER ONE THING: Not trying hard to seek out girls!  Back in high school and early college it seems like every night was devoted to figuring out where girls would be and working to talk to them, hooking up with them, etc.  I cannot tell you how complacent sooooo many of my friends have become with not going after girls.  I am extremely guilty of this myself too.  My friends and I are in general pretty eligible guys (educated, jobs, good shape…) but it seems like many have just given up the thrill of seeking out chicks.  I have many friends who have not even so much as made out with a girl in the past year or two.

    I know there is a real danger in speculating too much on casual observations.  I am not saying any of the things I mentioned are because of PMO but it definitely has me wondering if others have noticed any of this type of behavior in people they know well.

    GUY 3)

    We can’t possibly know unless a random sample group is willing to share their intimate details. I think it’s obvious that a lot of men watch porn, but how often do they watch porn? Do they binge? Do they use fantasy instead? Do they just masturbate to touch alone? Perhaps they can still have relatively ok sex, but it’s not as good as it could be?

    Within my group of friends I would say that a lot of the sex talk is simply just that… talk. Those who don’t have girlfriends don’t appear to have sex very often – sometimes months and months apart.

    In my opinion, those who had a girlfriend, and had sex at an early age are probably better off. If they were able to have sex before any addiction took hold then they’ve probably reduced, or even stopped, looking at porn because they can be satisfied with real sex. But with every new generation comes a new danger. As internet is so fast and cheap these days, it’s far more likely that kids will get addicted long before they get into a sexual relationship.

    GUY 4)

    On one hand, I feel like it has to be incredibly widespread. Reason being internet porn is everywhere and it’s quite addicting.

    On the other hand, I’ve been on different forums or had real life discussions among friends & the consensus seems to be their porn use is controlled and they have a healthy sex life. Sure, I know most wouldn’t admit to excessive porn use. But since most of my friends legitimately have sex on a regular basis perhaps the urges aren’t as strong.

    And it’s probably widespread with certain groups and not others. I suspect it’s rampant among males under the age of 20, or individuals who are sexually inexperienced/ perpetually single (ie myself). Ironworld mentioned this in the post above and I believe he nailed it.

    So to answer OP’s question: realistically it probably falls somewhere in the middle. Porn addiction is out there and many are falling victim to it BUT there’s also a decent chunk of the population that either doesn’t find it appealing or is busy getting the real thing.

  45. The danger likely here is

    The danger likely here is that the porn will become more exciting than your girlfriend. She’s human and has self respect after all. Pornographic pixels have neither of these limitations. You’ll eventually expand your pornographic tastes since your sex will be based on the porn, and not her. If It’s based on porn, it will be subject to neverending novelty, always. So your girlfriend will get fed up with you asking her to do things she’s not comfortable with, since the damn abused pixels will do it for you, but she will not. You should find satisfaction with your girlfriend, enjoy every aspect about her, love her, seek out ways to work with her, and leave porn out of it

  46. this is the first generation in which the onset of the Internet

     In reality, men (or humans, rather) have struggled and fought against the inner conflict of sexual perversion (defined as a distortion of what’s healthy) for millennia.

    However, this is the first generation in which the onset of the Internet has spurred the production and distribution of pornography on a scale never before experienced in the history of man. Worse still is that such material is readily available to children and teenagers who have yet to enter or finish puberty and discover sexuality properly. Our minds are molded by this early exposure, and masturbation creates strong chemical and neurological pathways in the brain that cause us to gravitate toward porn instead of relationships.

    What truly makes the NoFap community so unique is not that we’re standing up against addiction to pornography and masturbation, but that we’re taking this stand for ourselves. No one is forcing us to do this; Not our family, not our churches, not our government. We are choosing to make this change. We’re doing it for our loved ones, for our communities, for the next generation.

    We are turning the tide against the demise of fulfilling sexuality. We are rekindling the flames of passion and desire for our partners. We are returning to lifestyles worthy of men and women who live with no regrets.

    Strength to you, fellow pioneers! – LINK TO THREAD

  47. I’ll start by saying that I

    I’ll start by saying that I am 20 years old, in college, and writing this at 5:30 in the morning after staying up most of the night deciding to end this addiction for. Here is some background on me: During middle school, when I first started puberty, I was one of the most popular kids in school. I was tall, athletic, probably the smartest guy in my class, and good looking. I was very confident around the prettiest girls in my grade, routinely flirting with them and grabbing asses in the hallway. I was even able to hang out with the girls in the grade above me outside of school. I never had sex with any of them, but I was perfectly ready. I dated the middle school cheer captain for a little bit in the 8th grade. The only porn I had been exposed to at the time was with friends watching HBO, magazines, or some Pay-per-view, all of which I did not have access to at my own house. I masturbated on a fairly regular basis from what I recall, probably no more than once a day or once every two or three days, beginning around the 5th or 6th grade. I masturbated to music videos on television during the day time, and BET uncut if I stayed up late enough on weekends. I would frequently use my Sports Illustrated Swimsuit magazine, a Victoria’s Secret, or my imagination as well. Throughout this, my behavior and social performance stayed at a desirable level.

    In high school as a freshman, I played football and remained popular, despite only being in 9th grade. I had the highest GPA in my class, and I was able to do things like attend a dance where only female members of a country club were allowed to invite dates. I was asked by one of the hottest girls in my class, I blonde cheerleader with big tits, and I don’t recall having any anxiety at any point during the event. This girl obviously liked me and wanted to be my girlfriend, but I was not interested in having a girlfriend at the time. The point is, I had options. I enjoyed being single and was open to sex at any time with girls. I quit playing football after 9th grade, but remained popular in 10th grade, asking the consensus hottest girl (cheerleader) in my class to the homecoming dance. My friends that I hungout with after school and on weekends were the most popular kids in the school. I would go to parties, but I would never drink and it was awkward sometimes, and I was still a virgin. Hell, I hadn’t kissed a girl since 8th grade.

    In 11th grade, I began to change my feelings toward people I hungout with. My best friend (who was also a virgin) and I were able to realize that the group we were hanging out with was dull and only cared about doing stereotypically popular kid things. We gradually stopped hanging out with the group of popular students, and we found a new group of friends. My best friend found a girl friend that he kept throughout the duration of high school. He was no longer a virgin. I never really cared about being a virgin. If somebody asked, I simply lied, and I was ready for sex at any point.  It was at this time that I began masturbating to internet porn on the family computer when no one was home.  Around the 2nd half of 11th grade that I began to resent my old group of friends. I allowed myself to get way to pissed off when around them. I would deliberated shoulder bump them in the halls at school, hoping to trigger a fight (I’ve always been confident in my fighting ability). I guess that was fueled by jealousy and frustration that they were acheiving higher social status than me by doing something I could easily do but chose not to do. Although I did not hang out with the popular kids anymore, I was still viewed as a popular student and attractive to girls, though my confidence and speaking skills with girls was starting to decline. I still asked younger girls to school dances and things, but I was not as confident as I used to be.

    In 12th grade, I received a laptop as a gift from my grandparents. This meant PMO every night. My social skills with girls declined more, and I had pretty bad social anxiety. I still remained popular and attractive, but I did not have any kind of aggressive attitude toward females. Weekends of my senior year of high school consisted of hanging out with my new group of friends (all guys). I was content with this however, as I was still unconcerned with my social situation. I slipped a little academically, and did not finish top of my class but still in the top 10. I received a scholarship to a good 4 year university.

    While at the university, I continued to PMO every night. I met a girl the first week I was there that I fell madly in love with. I went on one date with her, but my worsening social anxiety crippled me from taking any more steps to further our relationship. I stopped attending the class she was in, and we stopped talking to each other. I remained in love with her for the remainder of the school year. Around the 2nd half of my first year at college, my internet porn tastes took a turn toward masturbation instruction videos. This led to a general femdom fetish. I would PMO to this type of shit for the rest of the year. This fetish began to fuck with my mind, raising doubts about things like my penis size. My penis size would be considered big by most people at over 7 inches and average to above average girth. It still bothers me now. I began jelqing exercises, which I’m not totally against, but I was doing it with a self-conscious attitude. I was still a virgin and had not kissed a girl since the 8th grade. It was starting to get to me. I maintained over a 3.0 GPA for the year, but my academic performance had dropped.

    As a sophomore in college, I continued PMO every night. My porn tastes had evolved into genres like femdom, humiliation, cuckold crap, and shit like sissy brainwashing(the me from a few years ago would be disgusted). I was tired of being a virgin. I called up an escort I found online one night, and I lost my virginity. I had trouble getting it up, but I was able to peform. I called another escort a few weeks later and had a better performance. She asked what a cute college guy like me was doing with an escort. I couldn’t tell her that the anxiety I had prevented me from approaching any girls I found attractive. By the end of my sophomore year, my grades had declined and I decided to transfer to another 4 year university. My porn habbits became more frequent and more fucked up.

    And thats were I am today. A month at this new university with a new major. I should be attending class this morning, but I have stayed up all night writing this. Thats were I am right now. I found yourbrainonporn.com a few months ago, and it has been encouraging. I have failed at a few half-assed reboots. I installed the K9 web protection software, but that is easy to get around. A few days ago I relapsed after going 7 days without looking at porn or masturbating. I felt great at day 7, and my erection was the strongest I had ever seen it. I plan to take the next reboot attempt incredibly seriously, starting now. I figured I need all the tools I can get to help me, as this is a bitch of an addiction. I know there are tough times ahead. I need you guys to keep me held accoutable. Wish me luck.

    LINK -First Time Poster, Long Story I Would Like To Get Off Chest

  48. Am Ithere? No, it’s just the beginning.

    Am Ithere? No, it’s just the beginning.

    First of all, my addiction. I started watching porn when I was young, too young. It was a huge mistake and I blame it on society and on the pressure it puts on young men who are inexperienced about sex. When you are a teenager (or even a kid these days), if you don’t watch porn you are not cool, an outsider. Porn is easily accessible and there are really no restrictions to what content can be seen. I wish I would have played more games as a kid, instead of wasting my time with porn. Now I’m too old, tired and worn out to have fun, things have gotten difficult. I wish I could have my childhood back, I feel like I’ve been molested in a way. Porn has taken everything from me – I have little memory of my adolescence, all I remember doing was looking at porn.

    Porn is not realistic, it promotes misogyny and the idea that money can buy you anything. It gives you a false sense of fullfilment. I agree with people when they say that masturbation is natural and healthy, I wholly agree, but porn? No it is not. It’s true that not everyone ends up being addicted but in my opinion there’s no “right” dosage for porn. Sex is an important part of life and shouldn’t be lived through a screen.

  49. Pornfree much harder than nofap

    Pornfree much harder than nofap

    I’ve been doing fairly well in nofap, but I have looked at porn probably once per week in my 70-day streak of nofap. I don’t know what it is about porn that draws me back. I want to keep watching my favorite girls and explore the endless hours of porn that are out there. When I think about giving up porn for life, I have to fight against feeling like I’m missing something in my life. I am trying to rededicate myself in the fight against porn.

    Wish me luck…

    GUY 2)

    I can attest to that. Doing nofap brought me here. After a 38 day streak I failed, willingly, without porn. But that set into motion some old habits. 4 days later I pmo’d. Now im 6 days of nofap, only 1 of noporn and im fighting the most intense urges. Noporn is definitely harder.

    GUY 3)

    NoFap is a breeze in comparison to PornFree!

    Im still not sure whether porn is really all that bad if youre not fapping to it, especially if its just vanilla porn?

    GUY 4)

    All I know for sure is that for me, right now, any kind of porn is unhealthy and causes some serious porn-induced ED

    GUY 5)

    Same boat here. Almost a month on nofap and somewhat less on pornfree.

    Still, it is still great improvement over doing both almost daily, so I focus on that.

    GUY 6)

    I agree. It’s been 14 months since I’ve fapped but only 2 months since I last watched porn. For me I find that 90% of my porn urges come while I’m on my home computer, so lately I have been choosing to keep it off for most of the day to stop myself from casually sitting down and farting around online. Even if I’m not horny, 20 years of habitually searching for exciting sexual content does not go away very quickly.

    Instead I’ve been spending my free time with my family/friends and reading more, particularly books that challenge me to be a better person.

    GUY 7)

    Couldn’t agree more. I’ve got 11 days of nofap, but I still pull up a porn pic every other day or so. I don’t know why, bc it just frustrates the fuck out of me. I haven’t watched any vids since starting nofap, and I’ve only spent a total of about 3 minutes looking at pics. It’s a colossal improvement over my pre-nofap binges, but I know I’ll just slip more and more if I’m complacent. Pornfree is a must. There’s just no other way for me.

  50. can’t actually watch more than 30 seconds of anyone clip

    TED talk really opened my mind. Watching porn has become a habit. I can’t actually watch more than 30seconds of anyone clip, I was always searching for the next thrill. My energy has been feeling low recently and I have symptoms described in the TED talk.

    Become a habit, here from TED talk

  51. How many vaginas have you seen?

    How many vaginas have you seen?

    Seriously. Let’s do some mathematics.

    I started NoFap when I was 22. Before then, since the age of approximately 14 or 15, I was watching porn at least once a day. Each porn session would result in me maybe viewing 4 or 5 videos on average (I’m ballparking here since in the earlier days it took me less to get off, and in the later days my sessions became longer and more varied). I had holidays and stuff, but lets just say the average amount I actively watched (lets not even try and work out how many I saw by proxy when browsing for that perfect scene) per day was 2.

    Lets say I started at 15. That’s 7 years of 2 per day…

    That’s 5110. (at least). This number makes me feel a little sick.

    Its not a wonder how porn can screw up your mind.

    (oh and, that means I’ve also watched over 5000 men cum). That’s kind of sad.

    So, whats your magic number?

  52. How fapping ruined a 16 year olds social life

    How fapping ruined a 16 year olds social life

    I remember more then a year ago, before my brother moved out I had no problems with masturbation. I could go days without porn and still didn’t feel the urge. Despite having some social anxiety I was considered the funniest kid in class, I was the one who loved making speeches without feeling a shred of nervousness and things went great with the girl I loved. My god she was beautiful…

    But once my brother moved out the house was free all for myself (my mom works late shifts every two weeks) and just out of loneliness I started fapping. I downloaded a porn video in full HD last summer and was blown away by the clarity the video had… And thats when things escalated. Almost everyday for a year up to this point I jerked of.

    Today, my social anxiety has worsened. I am in highschool right now and lost contact with the girl I love because I started having these weird twitches when having a conversation with her, or anyone for a fact. I can barely make an sentence without stuttering in front of people. I feel like dying everyday at class because I am always so nervous and shaky.

    I am at the addictions highest point: Got ED, cant hold a conversation without panic attacks, and have scaring on my penis for jerking of that much.

    However I still enjoy some things: Taking a walk, exploring the nature and working out in the gym (I have a great looking body). But I am doing all of these things by myself, all alone.

    For the past two months I have tried to quit. And my record is holding it of for a week. But today I shamelessly jerked of and again I am sitting here alone feeling shitty.

    Please give me the support I need. This is ruining my life.

  53. I read the post about having sores on your dick and actually chu

    The “You may have a problem if…” post
    If you have a huge porn collection on your hard drives from the past few years that you feel emotionally attached to… you may have a problem.
     
    GUY 2)

    If the thing you feel most passionate about is porn.

    GUY 3)
     
    When your dick was literally sore from too much M and death grip.

    GUY 4)
     
    If you have been fapping for 20 years, live alone and are still a virgin at 38.

    If you are thinking about getting one of those real life looking sex dolls so you dont feel so alone as you fap your life away

    If all your friends are already married and have children and you are still single because you are very antisocial and prefer to fap to porn instead of meeting real women

    GUY 5)

    If you take breaks during work or school so you can go fap in the bathroom in order to concentrate.

    If you get headaches when you try to abstain, start shaking, feel intense depression, and feel like you’re completely lost without porn and masturbation…. Then you definitely have a problem.

    GUY 6)

    If ruining your life because of PMO doesn’t make you change your habits, you may have a problem.

    GUY 7)

    • If having sores on your dick from masturbating is not keeping you from masturbating.
    • If you want to cum so bad, that not even cumming helps releive the tension.
    • If you cancel an appointment with friends or family, so you can sit and edge for an entire day to monster girl porn instead.
    • If you have said no to sex, because you have ED and honestly prefer porn over real women.
    • If PMO’ing is no longer something you want, but it has become something you need to function.
    • If you take breaks during work or school so you can go fap in the bathroom in order to concentrate.
    • If you get headaches when you try to abstain, start shaking, feel intense depression, and feel like you’re completely lost without porn and masturbation…. Then you definitely have a problem.

    GUY 8)

    If you spend longer and longer edging while you prepare for the perfect moment to cum… you may have a problem.

    GUY 9)

    I read the post about having sores on your dick and actually chuckled – been there, done that. I hope the following true stories can provide a giggle, but also show how pathetic PMO addiction can get. I’m not proud of any of these, but strap in cos this is probably going to get out of hand… (no pun intended)

    • If you’ve jerked off to porn on your first colour screen phone while your SO is asleep in the next room (your bedroom with your computer), you may have a problem.
    • If you’ve jammed your phone into the gap in your steering wheel so you can watch porn and jack it while driving, you may have a problem.
    • If you’ve tried to jerk off in a petrol station toilet but failed to cum cos you didn’t have any porn, you may have a problem.
    • If you have jerked off in your brother’s house while he was getting his grocery shopping, you may have a problem.
    • If you’ve done all your internet banking on the first day of the month cos you know your bandwidth will be gone by the second day, you may have a problem.
    • If, after 2 years of this, you then work out that you can upgrade your download limit online during the month, and then proceeded to do it not once, but twice, until you were at triple your original cost and the maximum download limit for that ISP, you may have a problem.
    • If you then exceeded that bandwidth limit before the month’s end, you definitely have a problem.
    • If you have found a new starlet, and signed up to multiple sites because you don’t like jerking it to preview clips and the torrents were just taking too damn long, you may have a problem.
    • If your brother asks for you to copy him some porn and you give him the first 100Gb or so of your collection, but it all starts with the letter “A”, you may have a problem.
    • If you’re drunk and staying over at a mates house and jerked off to porn at the family computer in the lounge room while your mate is passed out drunk on the couch, you may have a problem.
    • If you then have your mate’s dad walk in on you and not bust you due to your tiger like reflexes of alt+tab, you may have a problem.
    • If you waited for him to leave and then went back to jacking it, you most definitely have a problem.
    • If you have started jerking it while drunk, passed out and then woken up the following morning with your hand still on your junk and porno tape hanging out of the VCR, you may have a problem.
    • If you notice that someone has put your washing on the end of your bed while you were passed out, you may have a problem.
    • If you push the tape back in anyway and go back to jerking it cos you figure last night didn’t count if you didn’t cum, you definitely have a problem.

    I will update this as more come into my mind. As you can see, nofap is well overdue in my case.

  54. Who else feels emotions less because of porn?

    Who else feels emotions less because of porn?

    It’s not even just the good things, sometimes you don’t even feel pain when you should which actually sucks. I’ve seen a few people mention this, but not that many and for me this is one of the worst things I’ve had to go through and was just wondering how many other people experienced it or if it’s just an extreme thing?

    GUY 2)

    I felt a lot more emotion when I had Dialup compared to having broadband.

    GUY 3)

    No, it’s common. The numbing effect of porn & masturbation is real, and it’s why many go through some pretty unexpected and extreme emotional mood swings during the NoFap reboot. You’re suddenly not using fapping to cope and escape from feelings, so you have to face reality head on.

    GUY 4)

    It’s like, the pain life might throw at you isn’t as bad as not being able to feel it. You need to feel something rather than nothing, even if sometimes it hurts.

    GUY 5)

    The long road back to being Human.

  55. porn has made it so that sex is more about theatrics

    Think about it – porn, which used to be a good thing – a marital aide – is now an industry bigger than the NFL (and has been for some time).

    It’s piped into our homes.

    And to stay competitive and profitable, it pushes boundaries all the time.

    But take a trip in a time machine – let’s go 1992.

    Poll 1000 adults. Ask them ‘What is a facial?’

    A vast majority of them will refer to the beauty practice.

    Fast forward to today. What will happen when you ask the same question?

    My buddy from India was in America for about a month when we passed a salon that said “Facials.” He gave me a look, and said “I can’t believe you can do that here!” I clued into what he meant really quickly and laughed.

    He used to watch porn a lot in India, and the meaning of a word has shifted so much.

    We don’t focus on the spiritual parts of sex so much as we do the physical parts now. Every. Girl. I’ve been with has had a load of semen shot in her face or chest by me. Why? Because it looks like you’re supposed to do it. Why do they let me? Because it looks like I’m supposed to do it.

    Cumming in her vagina (with a condom) or in her mouth would be enough – it even feels better – but porn has given us the thirst for theatrics – all unhealthy. In fact, the theatrics are bigger than the experience now! Cum in her mouth? She better swallow, because it’s hot! (why can’t she just discreetly spit?)

    Anal sex – I never would have explored it unless a girl was in touch with her body enough to ask for it because she liked it. I’ve given girls anal because of the theatrics, even though it wasn’t pleasurable to ANY of us.

    I’m not against theatrics, but it’s clear that for many of us, porn has made it so that sex is more about theatrics than the experience, when it should definitely be the other way around.

    LINK -Porn is so immediate and intense, it destroys our capacity to engage in the far more human and low-key business of actual sex. – Alain de Botton

  56. real sex didn’t live up to my experiences as the guy in the porn

    The thing I noticed when looking at porn was I associated with the guy in the scene and when real sex didn’t live up to my experiences as the guy in the porn I felt let down and resentful. Like I wasn’t getting what was due me and this other guy (porn star) was. So sex became a let down because ‘other guys’ were getting all this crazy shit from beautiful women who were enjoying it and I was getting (and giving) lame sex with my wife if I was lucky enough to convince to have sex with me instead of watching TV.

    I actually had myself convinced that I had no choice but to look at porn and more because I would never have the fun sex that all the other guys (porn stars) had. I deserved something, didn’t I? It wasn’t fair that I wouldn’t experience that stuff. LINK

     

  57. NoFap makes me think of how sad it is to live in our times.

    LINK – The Problem

    NoFap makes me think of how sad it is to live in our times. We live in a time where staying inside doped up on SSRIs, alone, watching incessant amounts of lonely TV, and having tons of imaginary fairy sex with your primal dexterity is acceptable. People just label these people “shy” or “introverted”, but I think we have an epidemic. It’s sad that, to avoid the effects of unbalanced chemicals in the brain, we have to exert so much physical and mental energy. With diet becoming such a chore to keep up, people flooding themselves with cesspools of anti-real social values by pushing each others’ human forms into a texting game of misconstrued interpretation and finding empathy in technology rather then the actual “Him” or “Her”, and exercise not being seen an important aspect to our daily lives. This shouldn’t become normal.

    And NoFap has become taboo! Everyone is starting to accept that masturbating your problems away is just evolution or some shit. I know some people that think I’m stupid for doing NoFap, but these are also the same people that sit at home playing hours upon hours of League of Legends whining about how they need a girlfriend, or that come home from work and do nothing but lay on the couch watching TV and indulging in a binge savory and saccharine delicacies wondering “why is my life shit?” and answering it with a fist full of anti-depressants. I would hate to see this become the norm, but I feel like that’s where this is all headed if we don’t do something about it.

    So as much as I want to procrastinate, stay at home, and do my lonely activities, I will fight this. We’re the type of people that will end up on top in life, the ones that take our aspirations and turn them into sweet, sweet, tangible reality. The ones that have a chance at seeing the view from the top of a mountain rather than from a camera from a plane on a synthetic screen. The ones that will taste something much more satisfying than a Big Mac and fries or fucking your fake internet girlfriend through Pornhub. We’ll taste, touch, smell, see, hear, and feel life coursing through our veins.

    “You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, men spend hours on pornsites instead of being productive, or more and more men experience ED, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan.” But when I say that one little community starts NoFap, well then everyone loses their minds!”

    Hawkeye5

    I never even heard of the internet until my sophomore year of college, and here I am at my age overcoming this addiction. I am truly sympathetic for the young men who have been exposed to this crap from the time of first puberty.

    petef92

    the only reason i decided to take action and stop is because i got drawn into camsites that charge extortionate amounts of money, the ‘shame’ aspect of that was very addictive.

    This makes me wonder how many people view porn on a daily basis and think nothing of it, constantly angry about how they’re socially awkward etc. i swear i spot these people sometimes; the downcast eyes, not knowing what to do with their hands or where to stand.

    ForesterNL

    Like you say, an epidemic of people with mental barriers.

    There is a time and place for most things and never in excess (which is usually the keyword). I do believe habits get set when you are young (diet, tendencies, etc). Even though I am only 28 I remember only being inside when the weather was horrible. The current generation tends to not be that active which leads me to believe some might need to work at it a bit harder later in life.

    kikstartkid

    I agree. It’s crazy when you realize that modern technology has both significantly advanced our civilization and significantly damaged the minds of men. But, we are still so early in the ‘internet age’. Empirically proven knowledge about our minds/bodies and the impact the internet/technology has on it is only growing and becoming more widely distributed. This community is testament to that growth.

     

  58. Achieved a great life and

    Achieved a great life and porn is starting to destroy it. Please help? (repost from r/pornfree) 

    So this is somewhat hard to write – but I thought I would give it a try. I have no where else to turn with this as this is such a shameful part of my life. It is a rather long post, apologies, but I need help from those who have gone through similar problems.

    I’m a young man in my mid-twenties, living in London, not originally from the UK. I moved here almost two years ago for my dream job – working in development economics. My work environment and home is breathtakingly affluent (have to pause every now and take it all in) -not trying to show off, just got very lucky! I get to interact with politicians, academics, journalists from around the world- and more or less get to be a political and economic nerd all day long, get paid for it, and actually be surrounded by some of my intellectual idols.

    I have a wonderful social life, I row for a competitive rowing club, so I have a hobby, and I’m even learning a new language. I’m young and healthy. In the office I am considered the really nice guy, who is a gentleman, kind, and I’m generally liked by all. I’m constantly flattered with compliments on my charm and looks, even told by my CEO at meetings, “that I come straight out of Tommy Hilfiger ad” (although I guarantee you I do not have an ego, and actually I have rather low self-esteem).

    Objectively speaking, my life is amazingly wonderful – and yet I am not enjoying it the way I should be, because I recognise now that I am terribly addicted to pornography.

    In part this steams from a relationship that I left almost a year ago. It was a sexless relationship. She was a virgin, I naturally respected her wishes to hold off on sex until she was comfortable and ready for it. I fell madly in love with this girl, it was wonderful, until the day I found out that she had another boyfriend (who I thought was her ex-boyfriend, turned out she never broke up with him). She had been lying and manipulating me for over half a year – it was terribly devastating, to the point that i want into a solitary depression for a couple of months (the clincher – we also work at the same place, which makes life terrible at times).

    I’m not saying that this failed relationship lead me to over-excessive porn use. I know that I had already passed that point years earlier. I was fapping to porn on a daily bases. A good day was when I only fapped once. On most days it would be a least 3-5 times. I also started to watch increasingly more perverted porn – clearly the need to find something new and stimulating. I even end-ed up reading incest hentai doujin comics (don’t have a sister, but still, sick shit like that started to turn me on). I would search the main porn producers, to see if they had new girls – constantly needing to find new stimulation. I realised it was getting bad, when I would be getting ready for work, and I would just fap to some porn – I was fapping, sitting in my suit at home, at the exact time that I should have been entering the office. I still got all my work done, and to a high caliber- but the fact that I was making porn a priority started to genuinely make me feel sick (in fact I am sick to my stomach just writing this right now). I finally broke down – when I was searching for porn that resembled my ex (who I never had sex with) as a need to find a virtual substitute. I can not tell you, how sad and lonely I feel at those moments.

    Since the end of my destructive relationship, I also noticed that my ability to sexually interact with girls was not… ideal. I could not flirt with girls, even though it was clear that they were interested in me, found me funny and enjoyable to be around. I felt like I was not living my life like I should be, because I was so ashamed of the person I am in private. On the exterior is this ostensibly nice, charming, and handsome young man – but who could barely keep eye contact with a girl (it requires all my strength to keep eye contact and not shy away when a cute girl looks at me). As a result, I do not see myself as a man, but as this little boy – who is still fapping like he was as a thirteen year old.

    I did have a sexual encounter with a beautiful girl a couple months back. She was absolutely stunning. I was fine and erect during kissing and touching. Even during fellatio I was erect – but the feeling I had was for the most part numbness as she was down there. The only sensation I could feel was the pressure – none of the other wonderful things that come with it. When we started to have sex – I was numb beyond belief – I could not feel anything and eventually it became so difficult that I became flaccid. It was a depressingly terrible moment for me.

    I realise that porn is taking over my life. I never thought it would get to this point -that I would be addicted to something like this. The thing is, I don’t want to “recover” just so I can have wild sex with as many girls as possible. I just want my self-esteem back to a higher level, I want to find a nice girl, and to be able to have intimate moments with her as we develop together. It may sound cheesy, but I am romantic at heart – and I want to be able to feel that, and not to disappoint someone because of an addiction.

    I genuinely believe that porn is leading me to a life where I will not be able to have a healthy relationship with anyone. Moreover, I am so ashamed of the person I’ve become. My family, friends, and co-workers have this image of a good wholesome boy and I just can’t bare the darkness that I seem to be in. Right… so I know I’ve been writing a great deal. I NEED HELP!. I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve added a “porn blocker” on Firefox which works fine – I’ve deleted Internet explorer (not like I ever use it anyway). But I primarily use Chrome, and I seem to always be able to disable the porn -blocker extensions that I install (any help on this?).

    But, to all those who have gone through the need to completely cut porn out of your life. What steps have you taken? What should I do? I need help, and I have absolutely no idea how to move forward.

    I have a great life, and I am so very depressed that I am not enjoying it fully because of some stupid porn websites.

  59. I Quit porn 2 weeks ago and feel great.

    I Quit porn 2 weeks ago and feel great.

    I have been addicted to porn for about 6 years. I always thought it wasn’t an addiction. I was always in to having the rush of it all. Bangbros is where it all started. Thinking back, If only I knew how weird and addiciting this was, I would have never done it. I was always talking to my friends in my class and thought it was normal to look up porn daily. Then it became twice a day. Then I’d start doing it THREE times a day. The weird thing is, I didn’t even own my own computer. But, anyways. Up until I got a girlfriend, I never realized how truly addicted I was. After I told her that I always watched porn, I really started to take a toll on her. By this point, I really didn’t notice how getting off to porn would hurt anyone else. 2 weeks ago, she told me how much pain she was in from me trying to get pleasure somewhere else. Then it really hit me. Ive tried to quit all summer. I’d relapse so fast. I technically wouldn’t even call it quitting. But, Porn is definitely like a drug. Softcore is the gateway. Then you need a little bit stronger stuff, then stronger. The only tough thing is the super strong urge, but I’m proud to say that I’m done with pornography.

  60. 75 Day Report: My Porn Addiction

    Background: 29 y/o male, single, not religious, addicted to extreme porn, PMO’ed 2-3 times in most days with few hours of porn. Now doing NoFap in hard mode.

    Report: It has been 75 days since last masturbation. Only thing that i can say that after day 60 urges have exploded to the new record. Really positive thing is that now i’m horny for the first time in my life. When i was on PMO i was never horny without stimulation. I always wondered how it feels when guys told that they are horny and they need to get laid.. now i know how it feels. It has been really hard to get any sleep when i’m this horny.

    I was expecting and hoping that horniness would happen but i didn’t know that it would take over 70 days.

    Otherwise it has been stable ride.

    For those that are interested still no wet dreams from NoFap.

    About my porn addiction: I wanted to write about my porn addiction. Most people in NoFap know what it means to be porn addict but i want to share some light in to this subject. I think that people rarely write what porn addiction means to them.

    There might be triggers if you are in a sensitive mood.

    I believe that many non addicted people will think that porn addiction means that i’m obsessed by watching any type of porn. This is not true at all. I’m sure that people think that because i’m porn addict it means that i have seen many “famous big money porn movies”. This again is not true at all. I have seen probably only 15 movies like that.

    I would say that there is two parts in my porn addiction: Searching and watching. Actually i’m more addicted to searching of porn than watching it. I have become extremely selective about porn that i watch and search. When searching something that is very hard to find it starts to take a long time. I estimate that searching takes 80-90% of the time and watching 10-20%. When i find something that is hard to find i get more pleasure.

    When people talk about escalation of porn, for me it means this: First i was happy to see some non nude or very soft-core pictures, then i needed more hardcore porn, then something new and more shocking. I was curious to see more and something new. In a same time i wanted to see more specific type of women, specific positions, camera angles, acts… Amount of material that was OK for me was going down a lot. Many times i just couldn’t find anything new and good so i needed more genres of porn.. Even more shocking than previous. When i did this searching i was always edging at the same time.

    There were moments when i tried to stop using extreme porn but i had no control for my use and relapsed even deeper than where i was.

    I used many tabs simultaneously and when i found something good i opened it to another tab to wait. When i had enough of good material, i selected best scene and masturbated to ejaculation. Material that i found during searching process was zero value after ejaculation. I don’t watch same video for twice, i always need something new to watch and search.

    For me this process of searching and watching became something that nothing else compares. Build up and release from this is something that even normal sex doesn’t compare. I remember that years ago i was thinking that sex isn’t that good as porn is and it’s true. Real women can’t compete with porn at least when you are addicted to porn.

    I believe that in a same time when watching porn felt great, other things started to feel.. Nothing. I preferred porn over many other things in life. Porn had negative effects to my life and probably more than i know.

    I used porn to escape from stress, insomnia, negative feelings, relationship problems, other problems, when i was lonely or bored. Use of porn was strongly rooted to my everyday life. I hope that i can someday live without daily thinking of porn.

    Future of porn? I wanted to bring this up because when i started using Internet porn about 12-13 years ago. It was hard to find any extreme pictures. I’m sure that material was there but it was more underground and very hard to find. Now it’s easy to find full videos of same type of porn. I think that in a big picture, people using porn are becoming more desensitized for what they watch and extreme is considered more normal. I’m not saying that porn should be banned but it’s something that i have noticed.

    Thanks for reading!

    LINK – 75 Days report and about my porn addiction

  61. For addicts (like me) P-free

    For addicts (like me) P-free fapping just becomes a chore. Like eating a rice cake when you want a creme brulee.

  62. Ive been thinking about this subject (the technological advancem

    I’ve been thinking about this subject (the technological advancement of porn) over the years and in my opinion, it’s only going to get worse, not better.

    From the Venus of Willendorf, to the printing press, to home video, to the internet, porn has always been early adopters of communicative technology. Once something akin to Star Trek’s holo-deck is invented, the porn industry will be quick to make holo-porn where you can bed your favorite porn stars night after night, whether she be human, alien, or just a physically impossible mess of nipples, tentacles, & holes.

    Of course, then there is robots of the future, also made to look like your dream gal. We sort of have this now, what with Real Dolls & the like. But Real Dolls are prohibitively expensive and they don’t move or talk. But I’m sure with technology advancing further, that we’ll have the ancestors of the Asimo with silicone skin. She’ll be able to talk dirty in a dry robotic voice with bad lip flapping. Sexy.

    We’re already seeing signs of a porn dominated future in Japan. The young men there are inundated with lots & lots of hyper-sexual imagery, thanks to the aggressive marketing of 100% fictional “moe” anime idols. Hastune Miku, a chip generated singing voice program (AKA a Vocaloid) is a chart busting singer with hit albums, concerts, and games. But she doesn’t exist in the real world. That doesn’t stop the otakus from pining over her assumed “image” and buying anything with her imaginary face. Meanwhile, plenty of real, talented girls & guys in Japan & over the world are struggling to break into the music industry. Japan’s birthrate is at an all time low, and a large population of men 15~40 are turning into “herbivores”, who shun the outside world and prefer their “2D” girls over “3D” girls.

    So yeah, if porn does continue at this pace, humanity is boned. We’ll die out with a whimper when the last male collapses of a heart attack over his robot waifu that he just boned.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/pornfree/comments/12801i/how_porn_rewires_your_brain_in_mens_health/

  63. Owner of ‘porn cartel’ has been using porn since age 10. Aged 19

    Owner of ‘porn cartel’ has been using porn since age 10. Aged 19 now and I want to quit.

    Hello. Yesterday was my first day in front of my own computer where I did not use porn.

    I have used porn before the internet became mainstream- I used to steal adult DVDs from my friend’s house and burn them onto the family computer (encrypting the files, of course) and then make copies to sell them on to friends in my primary school. It was my first real money maker; I must’ve made >£30 in my first week just from selling these DVDs to kids as young as eight when I was ten years old. £30ish was a crap load of money to the ten year old me and I had no idea what to do with it so I kept my stash in a shoebox under my bed and never touched a £5 note of it.

    The adrenaline rush of bringing something like ten hardcore porn DVDs into school every day to sell in the playground was almost as good as the content itself. I had my regular customers, mainly eleven year olds, who were always the first to buy the DVDs and as a result I became very popular. It was brilliant knowing that I was the one at the centre of all of this. That I was the mastermind of my own little ‘DVD cartel’. It was a cartel. I ended up with people working for me selling my ‘product’.

    I reckon I earned a good average of £10-15 a week from this over the course of around six months (before I got caught…)

    Before I divulge into how I got caught I must first tell you what led up to that miserable event. I have two schools in the town I live in- a primary school and a secondary school. At the time I was in primary school, my older cousin was in the secondary school. I told him about my mini ‘cartel’ and he was interested, very interested. Being the naturally sexually inquisitive 13 year old (with all his friends and their friends) he decided he would “extend” my business to the far larger market of horny teenagers.

    It was amazing. The first week I must’ve sold thirty or so DVDs at £3 each. That’s £90. My cousin and I worked under a 50:50 split. It was like exponential growth. My cousin ’employed’ his friends to sell DVDs to the neighbouring town’s schools and the ‘market’ exploded. I must’ve been earning an average of £30 a week and it was brilliant- up until the point where the computer shop I was buying from started asking questions.

    Looking back on it, it was highly suspicious that a ten year old was buying a pack of 50 DVDs a week with paper money on a very regular basis however it wasn’t that which got me caught. The computer store’s owner caught his son with one of MY porn DVDs and now I, and anyone who was of ‘questionable age’ was barred from buying optical media from the one and only shop.

    This is where the ‘cartel’ began to crumble. Since my cousin’s dad owned a computer (with a porn blocker on) he was able to go online and buy DVDs in bulk with what he didn’t tell me was his dad’s stolen credit card. This was fantastic; we got the DVDs cheaper than in store and in greater volumes! It was fantastic until my cousin’s dad noticed the strange cash withdrawals and what made it even worse was the fact my cousin confronted his dad with about £100 to pay for the DVDs to which point my cousin was asked “Where the hell he got that type of money from!?”.

    His room was searched and about 50 porn DVDs were found in there, alongside about £200. We were busted.

    I received a desperate phone call from my cousin who was in tears. In the background was vicious shouting and blaming of both parents by one another. He told me “My Dad found the DVDs and the money and they’re going to call your parents” before abruptly hanging up. I was in utter shock and I curled into a ball and started crying. I had like £400 saved from the ‘DVD cartel’ and other earned money in that shoebox and I knew my parents would find it, alongside the DVDs.

    I ran downstairs and retrieved a dustbin bag and as fast as I could I slung all the DVDs in there. I then buried them in the garden under a christmas tree.

    Of course my room was raided and the DVDs were never found but I was grounded for about four months and my money was confiscated and put into a secure 18+ childs saving bank account by my parents. They contacted the schools in the area and asked if anyone had been caught with ‘adult’ material recently and my parents were told people had been. My parents watched my disgustingly hardcore DVDs from my cousin (which made my mother cry) and the ones confiscated by the school and they were obviously identical. My parents have never looked at me in the same way since that.

    So what has made me bring all this up? I remembered that sack of DVDs I buried. The christmas tree had long been removed from the garden so I found a shovel from the garage and started digging around the tree stump. I felt like I was digging up a long murdered corpse from my past. I kept digging until crunch, I had hit the DVD bag.

    I counted 46 DVDs in there and I found one which worked. I was shocked at how hardcore the content was and I felt deep shame knowing I pushed this type of stuff to eight year olds.

    This shame is what is making me want to quit porn entirely and therefore cut down on masturbation.

    As for the money, I am going to try to access that to buy myself my first moped.

  64. Highspeed streaming porn IS more stimulating than sex

    As someone who wanted to quit 6 years ago, then became ambivalent for the past few years, then as of this year determined to quit, I feel more than qualified to answer the question: “why stop?”

    The simple answer is that the negatives far outweigh the ”positives”.

    When I was just going through puberty, I wanted sex so badly. I wanted to have fun playful intimate sex. I wanted to have a girlfriend or get married (I was also very religious so I believed in abstinence until marriage, that fucked me up more unfortunately).

    When I masturbated, it was awesome. I was usually horny first, then masturbated using simple fantasies or images from real-life girls I saw throughout the day, cleavage, thongs, simple stuff. I would wank for about 15 minutes have a great orgasm and move on. My erections were always fantastic and I enjoyed my body greatly.

    Then came porn, starting with still images. I would sneak a few peeks on the family computer at a time and then masturbate in the bathroom or my room.

    It was somewhat addicting because I kept going back, but I did not experience symptoms other than guilt and frustration.

    Then came streaming videos. I found the fucking jackpot. Scavenging through page after page of videos, popping up the ones I liked into new tabs, then going one by one, watching each one until I felt there was nothing exciting left then quickly moving onto the next. Man, this was fun. Nothing in life was exciting as this, video games, movies, music, food, whatever. I can still remember the excitement of finding a clip that tickled my brain in the right spot.

    What happened was if a clip was so fucking good, I knew there had to be another one just a few pages away. So I would never ejaculate on the first video, I would edge and use kegels to maintain an erection while grabbing more videos.

    I could never decide when to orgasm, because there was always something better out there. I developed extreme ADD-like behavior when searching for porn. I believe this ADD-behavior carried over into my daily life because I couldn’t pay attention to movies or video games very well, much less normal behavior like conversations or everyday tasks.

    After binge sessions I would often resolve to never watch porn again, but deep down still feeling ambivalent. I would clear my history, start marking days on a calendar, only to binge a week later. Eventually doubting whether I really wanted to quit, I stopped trying to quit. I didn’t know about any evidence for the symptoms described on YBOP, though I did start to get suspicious that my sex drive was being affected, because I realized I couldn’t fantasize properly anymore, nor did normal things about women turn me on, like peeks of cleavage or thongs, they could have been a dude for all my brain cared.

    I never had erections preceding porn, I had to masturbate myself to get stimulated. Masturbating became a tool for porn, rather than porn being a tool for masturbating.

    When I moved out on my own, I started to try to get psyched to have real sex. But almost every day would end with me watching porn. Would resolve to not watch, delete history, rinse repeat every week.

    When I did force myself to go in social situations like parties or bars, I ended up getting into makeout situations, but it never felt quite right, and didn’t get the stimulation I imagined.

    When I decided to actually initiate a sexual encounter with someone I liked, I felt absolutely nothing in my dick when she took her top off – TRIGGER ALERT – and she was a beautiful smooth-skinned Asian who had fucking incredibly huge tits. This experience sucked as I felt no connection to my dick whatsoever, and I even worried if she might think I’m gay.

    After this I looked up testosterone stuff and got tested, looked into many other things, but it wasn’t until I talked to a friend who had ED and found YBOP that I finally decided to end my ambivalence.

    Now I can’t speak for anyone else’s reasons, but having a dead flaccid dick and dysfunctional libido (wanting sex mentally but not physically) is more than enough reason to quit. Aside from the issues of procrastination and possible ADD symptoms.

    As for this “higher orgasm” you experienced, this can happen from real sex too, in fact it’s more likely to happen I imagine.

    What TheUnderdog says is completely true: Highspeed streaming porn IS more stimulating than sex and that’s the problem!

    A lot of people are ambivalent about quitting porn because the reality is, we’re quitting something that is the most pleasurable activity in the world! It’s so pleasurable that everything else pales in comparison. However our more rational selves don’t want to spend our lives with nothing to show other than huge amounts of used tissue so we have to give up the most pleasurable activity to be able to do more satisfying things with our lives.

    http://www.yourbrainrebalanced.com/index.php?topic=3427.25

  65. PORN: How giving it up has changed my life (Blog)

    PORN: How giving it up has changed my life

    I remember the first time I typed in the word ‘sex’ into a search engine as a young boy—back in days of Windows 95, Ask Jeeves, and that irksome cacophony of  a dial-up modem. I remember my eagerness as I sat there waiting, for hours on end sometimes, just for the chance to watch a low-quality three minute clip of naked strangers violating each other for the camera. I looked at the download bar like a heroin junkie burning his spoon. How wicked and wonderful.

    Since the day of my first ejaculation, internet porn was ever-present in my sex life. It was the bow to my arrow.

    We are Generation XXX. The startling truth is, the average 15-year-old boy today has seen more naked women than all of his ancestors combined. We live in an age where watching internet porn is considered as normal as taking a piss, with  99.9% of guys my age regularly getting their fix of pixelated ******. Hey, if everyone else is doing it, what’s the harm, right?

    POST CONTINUED…….

  66. my urge to masturbate is much stronger than my urge to watch por

    What’s most surprising throughout this whole ordeal is that I don’t have any urges to watch porn. The temptation of new porn videos has always been my biggest cause of relapse, but I really don’t care about porn anymore (I hope this is permanent). I think the longer you go without porn the less of a hold it has over you. As I said in the title, my urge to masturbate is much stronger than my urge to watch porn for the first time since my discovery of internet pornography, which can only be a sign of progress

    ED Progress: Last night was the first time in years that my desire to Masturbate was greater than that of watching Porn (potentially NSFW language)

  67. I find masturbating by itself immensely boring.

    I find masturbating by itself immensely boring. Getting to the point of orgasm takes lots of effort. Porn reduces the (perceived) effort immensely. I guess for me its similar to watching tv while I’m on an exercise bike.

    So for me, pornfree doesn’t really help. If I’m masturbating I want an orgasm. I will get bored half way through and either give up or turn to porn. Neither of which makes me feel particularly amazing, so I’d rather not even start.

    pornfree vs no PMO

  68. Porn Desensitizes & Screws your perception of “normal”

    Porn Desensitizes & Screws your perception of “normal” 

    Seriously, I evolved overtime from normal porn to really nasty, hardcore porn. Stuff that I won’t even mention.

    When I was dating, I objectified my girlfriend and sex ceased to have that special magic. I didn’t realize this then but now I do. I wish I could have given more of me. I acknowledge that being hooked on PMO was the culprit because Once I abstained from it and it was a lot more enjoyable for the both of us. Being selfish ultimately led to us breaking-up. Something that I really regret now because I still have feelings for her but she moved to college and Met new people.

    Porn Desensitizes you and it corrupts relationships. Let it be known! If you’re dating, or married, please benefit from this advice.

    Love is really special. Don’t lose it for a lie!

  69. Comming back to the modern world some years ago was a shock

    Nofap starts at age of 52

    I did masturbate since the age of 13. But, in 1973 there was no internet nor porn available. Sometimes an old Playboy issue, but even females in catalogues (or even thought of them) made me horny. Sometimes I tried to get rid of fapping, but I never succeded.

    With 30 years, still beeing a virgin, I married my one and only wife. We´ve got five children. I still did masturbate, sometimes to porn or erotic literature. Even my wife red it sometimes for arousal. Then we moved to a very remote area in this world, with no internet or TV or erotic pictures. I masturbated to ads of normal magazins from home (with some goodlooking or sexy women on it, but nothing really naked). Even the women in that country were covered with clothes mostly everywhere, and seeing a “modern” one with trousers made me horny.

    Comming back to the modern world some years ago was like a shock to me. Everything was sexy and tempting. Not long after I discovered sexy images first and then porn movies on the internet. I didn’t try to cheat my wife and never thougt of having sex with those images on the net. I just looked there to get aroused an then I orgasmed for relaxing. First time it was incredible and really arousing, but then I needed longer to get O. And during intercouse with my wife I got no O at all. Even the errection I was missing. Even during watching porn I got weak orgasms with few sperm.

    Searching for the reason for my ED I found yourbrainonporn.com and it explained everything. Having been in hospital several times for some weeks (with few possibilities for fapping) I experienced more arousal and sperm, but after three day it was low as usual.

    So I decided to quit fapping 8 days ago, and I was able to live without it so far. I feel more confident, am able to look at women and smilingly look into their face. I had a nice and long karezza intercourse (without O) with my wife, me beeing hard quite quickly and for a long time and my wife getting a hard orgasm as I never remember before.

    So I hope I didn’t go too far with trying. And I hope to keep on with nofap to experience all the advantges of it. I still didn’t talk to my wife, but I like to, because I need to understand her the process of my healing.

    Greetings and power to all nofaps!

  70. New Perspective On Porn

    New Perspective On Porn (Edging Story)

    I edged tonight, but I never really came close to breaking, I’d like to share why and see if you guys/girls have gone through something similar. (Though my badge says 7, in terms of not looking at porn I stretch back over a month or so. Previous relapses have been down to imagination, or even just a pretty picture of a clothed model.)

    So, tonight I ended up on a porn site for the first time in a long while. While at this point I had almost submitted to the fact that this was going to be another relapse, the feelings I had this time watch porn were completely different from before I started no-fap. The sheer visceral intensity of the stuff is shocking, I suppose leading a life without porn your desensitised nerves start to return to a standard level, so I could almost feel a sort of physical reaction in my mind upon suddenly returning to it.

    Moreover, I just felt gross to be watching such appalling, bottom-of-the-barrel, degrading depictions of women and sex. Though I felt this in the past too, crucially it was always after the PMO deed had been done. This time though, that consciousness was there straight from the beginning.

  71. Increasing Public Awareness

    Increasing Public Awareness

    Since beginning NoFap (it’s been a few months, I relapsed recently) I have identified a minimum of 3 others that definitely have a problem with PMO. I suspect many more guys I know have a problem. Although, it is an awkward subject to bring up with them, kinda like outing myself. The best I can come up with is, “What’s the longest amount of time you’ve gone without masturbating?” I then tell them I have done 170 days and it was a life changing time. Two I have referenced to YBOP. Have any of you encountered others in your everyday lives that could use some NoFap and self-awareness/self-discipline? How did you handle the situation?

  72. most if not all my relapses started with such a kind of “seeking

    I can say that most if not all my relapses started with such a kind of “seeking”, often times over days or weeks starting with images that wouldn’t usually be considered porn, but would always lead to it. It’s helpful to discover that as a big trigger in itself.

  73. I Didn’t Even Think I Was Compulsive Porn-User…

    I Didn’t Even Think I Was Compulsive Porn-User… 

    PhakePhakerson

    After 5 days, I started having porn cravings. I guess the effects of porn on the my brain were significant even though I didn’t watch it much. I’d recommend anyone I know to stay away from porn now seeing that its psychological dependence potential is very high, at least in my case. It’s a good thing that I quit early.

     

  74. Surfing facebook for years did some strange things

    I’m sorry to report that I will no longer update this thread. I’ve had a change of heart today and decided it’s time to take a few steps back from titsintops and all the other porn related sites on internet.

    I used to be able to look at a simple porn movie, or just a model photoshoot. My love for voyeurism has brought me down to the level where I can only enjoy beautiful women when the picture was posted on their personal profile site. It’s time to go back to the roots. No fapping for a while, no internet porn, no more endless browsing facebook searching for girls’ photos.

    I’m sorry for anyone who can enjoy websites like this casually, but for me it has come to a point where I am no longer comfortable with my own behavior.

    Enjoy titsintops, everyone, I know I have.

    P.S. If anyone wants to know what to brought me to this decision, check out this video series:

    http://yourbrainonporn.com/your-brain-on-porn-series

    Quite an eye opener/

  75. Didn’t know I had a problem until I tried to stop….

    Didn’t know I had a problem until I tried to stop….

    Never saw my pmo as a problem. Then I listened to the Ted talk. Found nofap and now I’m struggling. Though it would be easy. Made it 19 day no problem… But after that relapse I can’t even pull together a week. I blocked all porn sites on my computer and deleted the few videos I had. Problem solved right? No. Now I find myself using my neighbors wifi to get porn….I’m almost in tears after this relapse….I want to stop but this is proving to be one of the hardest things of my life. I hope this stumble opens my eyes a bit more.

  76. four of the girls admitted that most of their sexual experiences

    Porn and fapping is an epidemic!

    I went out for drinks with a group of girls and we are very open and often discuss personal stuff and things like sex.

    At least four of the girls admitted that most of their sexual experiences with guys included guys who could not orgasm, could not get an erection and generally very selfish and uninterested in bedroom.

    Most of these girls are okay with porn and would not mind if their SO watched it because they are open minded. However I think they are too tolerant, I’m not saying you should break up or yell at your partner but you have every right to get upset and discuss the issue.

    Many of these girls gave their SO’s too many chances and the guys would lie about their habits.

    The fact that guys or girls are on this subreddit suggests that you accept the problem and not bullshit yourself that it is okay.

    In 5-10 years time I can guarantee that if people keep consuming porn, we will have massive relationship breakdown, dating will become non existant and there will be massive gender conflict.

    Take a step and become one of the small population who will be having healthy relationships including sex in 5-10 years time.

    Every step away from fapping is a step forward, even if the flat line feels difficult or impossible!

    Word.

  77. think in 5-10 years people will start to recognize that porn ha

    Thevents

    Personally I think in 5-10 years people will start to recognize that porn has effects. Its actually very comparable to smoking – for a long time the medical community would recommend that people smoke saying it was healthy (sound familiar?), then they admitted it had health effects, but insisted its not addictive. Then everyone agreed it was addictive. Finally they realized that this activity which almost everyone did was one of the worst things you can do.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/14jktw/porn_and_fapping_is_an_epidemic/

  78. Age 50, female – hooked after being introduced to Internet Porn

    I am a widow—happily married for many years from the age of 17. My husband and I had a great life and I lost him to cancer after a brave battle. I never knew porn existed…I know he had playboy ect, but we never discussed it. 2 years later I discovered online porn.

    My new bf could not believe I had never seen (also never played a video game, did not watch tv…very sheltered) and showed it to me—I am immediately hooked–to the point it made my bf uncomfortable (who enjoys it himself)

    really hooked—dailey—want to quit—I have learned so much—never heard of dp, facials tho my hubby and i did things other than vanilla—backdoor for instance– I did not know this world existed and now I can’t stop—and it has ramped up my desire 1,000% I am telling you this from the view of a 50 y/od childless (couldn’t) women who was introduced to this at age 50 and now has a real problem.

    I am fit (size 4) and look 15 years younger (genes) but now I am afraid of what I might be capable of as I have been protected so long….I will try therapy to stop—it is interfering in my life and I have to hide it now that my bf senses I like it too much—

    so yes, from my perspective it is dangerous, and addicting, I guess I am venting because I don’t know where to turn and no one I know would ever believe it if they knew—-poor teenagers—I can’t even imagine being raised with this….

    https://web.archive.org/web/20211016024215/http://www.datingloveandsextips.com/the-relationship-between-the-brain-and-porn/

  79. (Porn Now) I use sites that have large selections of videos…..

    I use sites that have large selections of videos. I browse categories and open up any video whose thumbnail and description intrigue me the most. The video is open in a new tab, and I start the video, clear off any pop-ups (whatever adblock misses – goddamnitlivejasmin) and pause the video to left it buffer. I repeat the process for a selection of about two dozen videos. I start watching them in the same order I opened them (because the first one is always done loading by the time I start buffering the last tab). I then skip around a bit if the pace is a little slow. I start to close tabs that aren’t as good as I thought. Then I start to close tabs that aren’t as good as the other open tabs. One by one, the tabs do battle for my penis attention time, until 3 or fewer or left. I then watch the best parts of each of them, switching over to my favorite one of the bunch to finish off.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/14mis7/our_biggest_problem_as_men/

    GUY 2)

    When I find this is becoming an issue, I take a porn break. The internet has made it very easy to find very specific things, and that kind of makes you build up a tolerance, which leads to a need for increasingly shameful pornography (for me, anyway.) Once that happens, I “reset” with a porn fast, then I’m back to being able to fap to whatever.

     

  80. No desire to fap without porn.

    No desire to fap without porn.(self.NoFap)

     by nullhypo

    I just wanted to share my experience. Without pornography (22 days now) I have literally no desire to masturbate. I am often horny. When I am horny I want to watch porn. Since I am nofapping I will not watch porn, but it never occurs to me to beat off without porn. I don’t even know if I could!

    Sometimes when I go to bed I will get hard from some mental fantasy, but I have no desire to masturbate. I’ll just be hard and be fantasizing. It is weird, even when I used to watch porn I didn’t want to masturbate, masturbation was totally secondary, I just wanted to keep watching porn as long as I could. I was usually trying to avoid orgasming just because I knew once that happened the shame would set in and I would stop watching porn. This would go on for hours with me “nursing” a hardon, trying to stimulate it just enough to stay interested but not enough to cum, so I could just keep watching all day / all night.

    This is what porn addiction looks like, and it’s crazy. Not masturbating is the easy part, not giving in and watching porn is the really really hard part.

    Falark60 days

    It was similar for me. Then, after my first 30 days I was so horny I actually made a thread I would fap again (exactly 30 days ago, bother that) and didn’t even get to opening a porn site, I just jerked off to the mental image of a female friend of mine…

    So at some point you’ll be able to again, sooner or later.

    By the way, for reference: I did 30 days of hard mode from scratch, and I didn’t reset my badge because I didn’t look at porn – I just got the pressure away. Since then it has been hard mode again.

    morning_woods

    What I’ve learned over the past couple months of this whole nofap/noporn thing is this:

    1) At first I couldn’t go without either. 1 day felt like a year. Let alone 3, which felt like a lifetime.

    2) Then I could go without jerking it ALL the time, but I would get these intense cravings/desires to watch porn A LOT

    3) Both calm down and now I can go without either for an extended period of time, say 4-7 days

    4) Porn becomes easier to quit when I do fap. Not that I don’t have a desire to watch it in some ways, but I am able to FANTASIZE (!!!! for the first time in like years without it)

    5) I’m now on day 12 of no/fap no porn. (No sex either). This is the longest I’ve made it in the past several months. There was one time, 2 or so months ago I made it two weeks w/o the M but with sex, and porn. I find it rather funny how I was still watching porn even though I wasn’t jerking it and I was having sex.

    tl;dr – Everyone’s results are different, and how we experience addictions are different. I would say your recovery may or may not look like my recovery, but, that’s how I progressed and I’d rather assume others may follow a similar trend.

  81. comparing the average partner to porn stars is like

    The thing is porn and masturbation makes for better sex than with a partner. Masturbation has been demonstrated to produce better orgasms since Masters and Johnson first wired people up and measured their responses in the 50’s. This is for both men and women. And comparing the average partner to porn stars is like comparing Lindsey Vonn to an intermediate skier of Serena Williams to an amateur tennis player.

    Moreover, women have been getting off better with vibrators since they became readily available and using the trick to become indifferent to their men. It’s only recently that porn has become so ubiquitous that it rivals real women.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/154jxl/til_there_is_a_growing_number_of_healthy_men_who/

  82. I have never told anyone what I am about to tell you. Please hel

    I have never told anyone what I am about to tell you. Please help.

     by nofap09

    It is December 25, 2012. I am writing this, and keeping this for myself – a reminder, if you will, for future reference.. regarding how I feel when I masturbate.

    My Story

    Here I am. It’s Christmas day, 2012. I don’t feel much, at all. 24 years old. I’m not a virgin, I’ve had plenty. I just masturbated. It’s 3pm in the afternoon. I feel like complete shit. Not guilt, or anything like that – I just feel completely unmotivated. I feel life has been drained from me. This is how I feel every time I post-masturbation. I feel like a piece of shit.

    My Current Life Status

    Masturbation has taken over my life. I go to work, come home, make dinner and then masturbate until bed time, which is usually midnight. That’s 6 hours a day of masturbating. On the weekends, I spend closer to 10 hours a day masturbating. It gets worse.

    I’ve never admitted the following to anyone in my life, this is extremely hard for me to do just over the internet. I cannot imagine how hard it would be admitting it to someone in real life.

    My ex gf actually caught me in the act of doing it – I stopped for a while but, it has since came back..

    Since normal porn doesn’t do it for me anymore, I actually video chat with women that I talk to on POF.com, get them on a webcam with me, and after ten minutes or so, masturbate and release into the cam so they see it.

    This behaviour is extremely abnormal and disgusting. I am disgusted with myself. I am a monster, and on the street in person, you would never guess it so. Porn does get me off, I just choose this route of getting off. I remember reading the “shock factor” on YBOP. Yes, it shocks women, and for some reason I actually get off on that.

    That is fucked. I’ve been doing this for 3 years now. My younger self, and my future self would and will look back and be disgusted with the person I am right now. I have taken it to a disgusting, repulsive level. I’m actually terrified and paranoid all the time that one of these women will report me to the police and I will be sent to prison.

    Moving on..

    I haven’t been going to the gym. I usually go for four times a week. I’ve been taking masturbating over video chat with random, innocent women over hanging out with friends. When I do go out the bar with friends, I become a pussy. I don’t talk to women. If I do, it’s like I don’t know what to say. Prior to these ridiculous and repulsive masturbation habits, I’d have zero problems.

    Right now, I am having sex with about 4 women consistently. We fuck, I leave. I get off, that’s all that matters. It’s selfish, I know.

    What I Want To Become:

    My goals for this day forward, and 2013 are as follows:

    • Cut the fucking porn and masturbating. I would do it once a month or so, but, until I kick this monstrous / creepy habit of jerking off to unsuspecting women over webcam, real sex it is (that’s where we want to be, anyway). Or, God Forbid, find a woman, connect with her and date her monogamously.
    • Meditate daily. I have practiced before and it has definitely helped.
    • Hit the gym daily. I have put on some weight, plus I’ve been slacking.
    • Watch what I eat. Nothing super strict, but, come on. Be healthy.
    • Go to bed at a decent time. I usually hit the bed around 12:30 and have to get up at 7:30. It’s not enough, for me.
    • Video games. Cut down to minimal amounts.
    • Leave my room. I literally go to work, and it’s to my room for the rest of the night. I’m addicted to the internet. I can hear the voice in my head. Get.A.Fucking.Life.
    • Start playing gigs again. I play guitar and sing, and I use to play gigs all the time. I don’t care to anymore. That will hopefully change.

    I apologize if this post was offensive to anyone, through the behaviours that I’ve committed – I just needed to tell someone. I’m scared because I don’t want masturbation or porn to consume me. I’m scared because my masturbation habits and porn usage have been escalating to such a level that this behaviour is disgusting and I want to stop it. My reputation would be utterly ruined if anyone found out I did this. I am literally tearing up typing this.

    So.. here’s to it. I will be fighting urges and going full-tilt.

    Here’s to bettering my life.

  83. if your porn addiction is getting so extreme that

    It’s about sexual excitement. After prolonged addiction to pornography, a man’s brain is constantly brimming with dopamine, which produces another chemical (it was mentioned in the video, but the name is too long for me to recount now), that eventually causes desensitization. Men basically become habituated to “normal” sex and it no longer causes arousal because the excitement is stymied. Therefore, porn addicts seek more bizarre and extreme forms of pornography just get excited, but there’s always a point where even the most extreme forms of sexual perversion lose their potency, and the porn addicts even becomes desensitized to THAT.

    Therefore, they start suffering from ED because normal sex with a girl doesn’t excite the porn addict.

    For a while when I was younger, I was curious about pornography so I used to visit this porn site called “pornhub.” It was vile, some of the things featured there. Honestly, I was able to get excited about maybe 10% of the sex videos featured there, but the rest was absolutely grotesque.

    Girls getting double penetrated in their asses, girls taking cum into their mouths and then spitting it into another girl’s mouth, and don’t get me started about the horrific hentai featured, where many of the popular videos featured story lines where young girls that look to be 13 or 14 are raped by their fathers or brothers.

    I stopped after I came across that. In my view, if your porn addiction is getting so extreme that you’re desensitized and disinterested in all forms of normal sex to the point where you need to watch incestuous statutary rape in order to get a boner, then you need to be hospitalized.

  84. go on for sometimes hours before I found the perfect clip to fap

    I remember only being excited by certain clips.  I would go on those tube sites and go back pages after pages to find that specific scene that turned me on.  Not neccessarilly an extremely graphic video, but always women with a specific body type, skin tone and hair color.  This would go on for sometimes hours before I found the perfect clip to fap to.  All the while edging.

  85. I would search and search and search every single time to find

    I would always start with some google search I didn’t need to make that would lead me to see some hot chick and well everybody knows where that goes. So slowly I would progress from pictures to videos. And the same thing always happened. I would search and search and search every single time to find the video that was perfect.

    How I Used to Watch Porn

  86. my fapping life is pretty much the history of porn.

    Oh, my fapping life is pretty much the history of porn. I’m turning 50 this year, and I started out before puberty. I distinctly remember my Mom asking me why the Sears catalog was in my toybox. I was looking at the girls my age in the underwear section. I didn’t know why, but I liked the feeling it gave me in my stomach and in my pants.

    A few years later I found my Dad’s porn stash. I remember my first orgams, on my bed when I barely had hair one, surrounded by open playboy and penthouse magazine. I also boosted some old school stag films from my great-uncle’s truck stop. 8MM silent black and white flicks.

    When I got busted messing with my Dad’s stash and it got removed from the house, I started shoplifting my own. (I was still a minor at the time, and they wouldn’t sell to me.) I got caught once, but the store owner just banned me; I wasn’t arrested.

    It was about this time that I created my first fake ID. To go to porn shops and fap in the booths. In those days, they had color films that ran continuously in loops. I never sank to sitting in a theater and fapping, although I saw it happen.

    Shortly after that was the “golden age” of porn. Porn came to our town in drive-ins, so I could drive in, park, watch the film, fap in privacy, then drive away.

    Then I started college. I bought a VERY expensive VCR specifically so I could go to the video store and rent porn to fap to, so that I couldn’t have to go to seedy porno stores any more. Around this time was also the birth of the internet. But at speeds so slow that it took 15 minutes to download a decent photo.

    So porn fans like me learned to automate that process, and download our pics over night. And there was a TON of porn stories out there to read, all for free. Video, however, took HOURS to download, and was grainy and the size of a postage stamp.

    Toward the end of my college career, live video started to be streamed over the internet, as well as recorded. I spent an astonishing amount of time watching the feeds at my desk at work, late at night. It really was pathetic. I could have been thrown out of school or fired if I was caught, but in those days no one monitored how the bandwidth was being used.

    Shortly after THAT ISDN became available. I was still scraping video off of the binaries groups on usenet. It was only a few years ago that I discovered tube sites, and those are the worst, I think, for warping your brain.

    Bottom line, I didn’t use internet porn during my teens, but only because it didn’t really exist as you think of it today. But I have used every kind of porn delivery system you can imagine, and it’s only gotten less realistic and more prolific as time has gone by.

    Here’s the deal – I’ve had Delayed Ejaculation since I became sexually active. I lost my virginity 34 years ago, and I came inside her. That was one of like six times in my life I’ve come inside a woman. Plus twice from getting blown.

    I’ve had a LOT of sex. But I only cum by myself. When I was younger, a lot of guys complained about premature ejaculation – being TOO quick on the draw. I thought I had great control. (And I will admit, DE is a LOT less disappointing to your partner than PE.)

    It took me a quarter century to realize that what I thought was an asset was a PROBLEM. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS of less-than-great sex. Porn really rots your brain.

    The ED only started once I started using the tube sites. The constant availability of novel, full-motion or compressed video with an audio track really messed with my sense of arousal.

    I will NEVER forget having an attractive, attentive, willing partner say to me “you don’t want this.”

    The HELL I didn’t. I’d been chasing that particular experience for TWO YEARS, and then Big Jim and the Twins decided not to come to work. I went to the doctor shortly after that, but he declared that I didn’t have a problem, because I could fap. If everything works fine when you’re by yourself, you don’t have a plumbing problem. The problem is between your ears.

    He gave me viagra. but it didn’t help. It says right on the box: does NOT produce an automatic boner. Sexual arousal must already exist. (I paraphrase.)

    It was Your Brain On Porn, which I found, ironically, while searching for more porn, that put me on this track. I went porn free as an experiment 31 days ago.

    I won’t say my ED is gone, but it’s greatly improved. Over the past two weeks, with two different partners I was able to achieve and sustain functional erections. (I used to be able to hammer a six inch spike through a two inch oak plank with it – THAT level of virility has NOT returned. I suspect because I’m still fapping 3 – 4 times a week.

  87. laughed at my brain last night as it gave me an absurd reason to

    laughed at my brain last night as it gave me an absurd reason to look at porn.

    I’m 28 days in my journey. Last night, I was watching the 7th season of Australia’s Biggest Loser with my wife. (Significantly better than US version, and I’m an American, living in America), when one of the trainers pops onto the screen. Instantly, my brain goes into panic mode at the sight of her. I’ll spare you all the description, just assume hot.

    So, instantly my thoughts shift gears, and this plays out in my head, “holy shit she’s hot. Fuck yeah you want her. Man, you don’t even know what naked breasts look like any more. You should go look at porn RIGHT NOW because you forgot what naked breasts looks like, and this is a SERIOUS problem.”. My heart was racing, and I wanted to jump up and sprint to my office just so I can remind myself what a random naked girl looks like.

    So, instead I sat there and calmed down, then told my wife everything. She laughed and said, “well, if you go on through life not knowing what random naked girls look like, will it kill you?”. That’s when it hit me how ridiculous my brain was being. NO I don’t need to. Fuck you. I am fine. I am not running in my office to stare at 100+ chicks in 30 minutes, NO.

    That was my first big “panic” so far, 28 days in. I hope those don’t hit too often!

  88. Questions for people who switched from NoFap to PornFree

    Questions for people who switched from NoFap to PornFree

    Once I switched over from nofap, things got more difficult, but far more rewarding. Giving up fapping was pointless, because I don’t fap without porn, ever. Coming over here and truly deciding to give up porn was much, much more difficult, but when I did, hours of my day opened up and my confidence increased greatly. I have started to masturbate a few times without porn, but didn’t really get much from it. This coming from an 18 year old guy who really has never been in a relationship is kind of odd, but I’m not concerned with using pornfree to better my relationship with others (I believe that will heal on its own), I’m doing it to better myself. So, yes, pornfree is a better experience for me, but no, I have not personally found a level of MO that suits me, and probably won’t as long as I refuse to use porn.

    GUY 2)

    Short answer: Yes.

    I believe most of the positive effects I was getting from nofap were do more to dropping porn then not fapping. I don’t have a gf or fwb at the moment, so not fapping meant no release at all. Once I hit day 7 or 8, my balls would literally ache unbearably until I fapped. Now I’ve switched to pornfree and have continued to get the benefits. I fap when I need to, not when I want to, which ends up being once every 9 or 10 days. I do it without porn and just get it overwith. In my opinion, if you have no gf/fwb then not fapping is just not a healthy goal. Everyone’s different, there’s dudes at nofap that are over 150 days and they don’t have a gf but for me it just wasn’t going to happen.

  89. I honestly think PMO is one of the most heavy addictions

    I honestly think PMO is one of the most heavy addictions

    by skeer10 days

    Fapping and porn is/was a habit so deeply rooted within ourselves because it is accepted. We’ve been doing it for long without even thinking about it. We unknowingly let build a hardcore addiction.

    I’ve tried some pretty addictive drugs the past two years. I could handle that and never really got in the danger of addiction. Now I haven’t used anything for a month, including weed, which was the most addictive for me. And let me tell you that it has been a lot easier than NoFap. Not using any drugs for 3 months? 6 months? Fine by me. Now 3 months of NoFap? That’s really difficult. We were so flooded with dopamine, it’s horrible when you think about it.

    Major respect to all of you. Don’t think this fight is something laughable, don’t think less of yourself; it is really difficult. And all the people who are still unknowingly PMO’ing heavily and joking about it would have the same hard time as you.

    English is not my native language, so I hope you guys understand everything. Strength to all the fapstronauts out there!

  90. Everything I hated about fapping to porn

    Everything I hated about fapping

    by DapperNofapper6 days

    When I think about PMO, usually I’ll think about the pleasurable side of it, and to help myself stop I’ll think about the bad effects it had on my life in general. Today I wanted to change that. I decided to think back and remember the really unpleasant parts of the act itself. This is what I was putting myself through every day. It’s no wonder it had an effect on me!

    • Too loud. Too quiet. What volume can I get away with? Why is there such a big difference between 0 and 1?
    • How do I dispose of this without drawing attention? It stinks when I put it in the trash. People will wonder what I’m doing if I always go into the bathroom from my computer and immediately flush.
    • Oh no I made a mess by accident this is gross. I hope nobody walks in right now.
    • That little bit of post-leakage that makes a disgusting wet/cold spot on your leg.
    • GIRLFRIEND IS HOME EARLY CLOSE ALL TABS WHERE THE HELL IS MY BELT ACT CASUAL
    • These all suck why can’t I find a hot one? Fine I’ll settle for this garbage.
    • Looks like we’re out of paper towels again.
    • Do the neighbors notice when I close my blinds in the middle of the day?
    • Good, my girlfriend is gone. I enjoy these nights the most.
    • What if someone walks in and my browser locks up when I try to close the porn tab?
    • I can’t focus on work but if I fap it will clear my head… I just fapped and now I don’t care much about work.
    • Ow, my dick is a little raw, isn’t this the puchline of jokes I used to laugh at? It doesn’t seem so weird now and that scares me.

    Also I’ll add the absolute worst fapping experience I ever had and this is something I’m ashamed to admit even anonymously. I was using an unconventional drug to enhance my PMO session and I passed out. I lived with my girlfriend and this was in the middle of the day so if she came home this would have been really awful for both of us. No idea how long I was out for, but I woke up with my pants half down, hand on dick, porn still playing, and drool down the front of my shirt. It was an awful, sobering realization, and the thought of “What if I die this way?” definitely crossed my mind. Unfortunately I did it again and that happened about 3 or 4 times before I finally stopped with the drug. Also unfortunately that happened 4 years ago and I didn’t make the decision to stop fapping until 5 months ago. I can deal with the fact that it happened, I just hate that I ignored such a glaring red flag that I had a problem.

    I’d love to hear more stuff like this. Fapping isn’t actually fun unless we force ourselves to ignore all this stuff, and I just want to be honest with myself.

    More from the Comments

    • (Being called for dinner) “Fuck, why wouldn’t they leave me alone?”
    • (Edged too much in the evening and at night, wakes up in the morning to find a blood vessel burst under the skin and it’s all purple around it because of blood spills. After some concerned research, finds out it’s not a big deal and will heal in a week or so) Instantly: “Good, this will keep me from fapping for some time. I never thought I’d be so glad to have such a scar on mine”. Ten hours later: “Well, I just need to rub the head a little gently here from now on.”
    • Cumstains: It’s so embarrassing when you notice them later just because other people looked at them.
    • Mail carrier, why do you always have to come at the time I just jizzed all over the place?
    • Getting interrupted all the time in the middle of my fap session.
    • freaking out when someone borrows your smart phone because it’s full of porn or porn links and then feeling like a douche because you can’t even let someone innocently touch your phone
    • I’ll fap and then I’ll do some creative stuff. And finally, I spent 2 hours watch porn and it’s time to get to bed.
    • oh god oh god oh god my parents/brother/friend is using the internet on my computer…why didn’t I clear history/autocomplete?

  91. This is what worries me about people who watch things like Henta

    This is what worries me about people who watch things like Hentai… surely once the main character has sprouted six tentacles and banged a whole bus full of japanese cheerleaders with them, how can ‘normal’ sex ever match up???

    On a serious note tho, congrats for kicking the habit and i’m glad everything has worked out.

  92. 17 tabs of porn in my browser.

    17 tabs of porn in my browser. 

     alienscape1 day

    This has become the usual theme…. What the hell am I even jerking off to anymore. It seems to be that I’m fapping not to the content itself, but merely to the ABUNDANCE of content. This is just insane. It can’t go on or I’m gonna have to call the paddywagon on myself. Starting today, I’m gonna make a most dedicated effort to reach 90 days. I’ve made it 3 weeks once. But I usually fail after about a week. Time to do the damn thing.

  93. I would have never survived growing up with broadband/google/fac

    I would have never survived growing up with broadband/google/facebook. 

    by effiebies50 days

    I’m 46 YO, and I would like to convey my admiration for all you younger guys who are coming here to deal with this challenge. When I was growing up, the porn was in magazines, poorly hidden in our basement. It took a while to find “good” pics. Later on, I had a dial-up modem, and it sometimes took a few minutes to download grainy images. And the search engines back then really sucked. I guess I was lucky.

    If I had had a speedy broadband modem, with google search, and facebook, I’d probably be overdosed in a gutter somewhere. I certainly wouldn’t be here, trying to clean up. I’d probably be od’d on porn face down in a gutter somewhere.

    So I wanted to to tell you guys how much admire your willingness to fight this. It can’t be easy, but then again, nothing worth having comes easily.

  94. I want to ask is question about such video format as FullHD

    What I want to ask is question about such video format as FullHD – ultra high quality of video. Personally, I guess I get addicted to it if not physiologically, then psychologically. I recall in one of articles you stated something like it’s not about duration of experience but intensity. So, this very high definition videos were so attracted for me, that even plain HD, standard videos and others not interested my brain so well; even tube sites I stopped to visit so frequently. So, can you say any thoughts about this super stimulation, obviously it seems much better for me than even real deal, maybe how it affected neural pathways etc ?

  95. To all the younger members from an older dude

    To all the younger members from an older dude

     by spurspack 68 days

    I read a lot of posts from the younger guys here and I want to say something. Ive been looking at porn and jerkin it for 25 solid years. What a waste. I find it hard to believe that my addiction has gone on so long. Porn was always something I just did and I never saw it as a negative. I was just prepping for sex right? Wrong. After a while I realized I wasnt having sex at all and I ws just beating off everyday. This ws with mags and tapes. The high speed shit is crazy! Porn on demand. Holy shit I dont envy u young dudes who started out on high speed porn. It pushed my addition to pmo to unprecedented heights. I have had extreme ED issues since.

    Im 68 days in to nofap with no porn and no fapping.. Im married and have been able to have great sex with wife so im lucky. I feel like my Dick and brain are in rehab and the outcome looks bright. Fellas…stop the cycle. Excessive porn will ruin you. Please dont be that dude who is with a beautiful naked woman and your Dick is nowhere to be found. Sucks worse than anything outside of a tragic death.

    You dudes have the power to eliminate that possibility now. Not tomorrow, right now. Say goodbye to all those poor porno chicks for good. In all reality, they are sorta gross and pretty nasty. They dont love you and are only holding you back from finding real love with a girl or woman. Im challenging you young fellas with this. You can do it with the support on here. Just my 2 cents, but I seriously dont want ang of you to suffer with these porn related problems during the greatest time of your lives. Nofap for now will at least start you in the right direction to succeed. Put away the porn and live my freinds.

    Hooked on high speed internet sucks. I did this my freind, so can you. I was an extreme addict 68 days ago and actually scared to have sex with my wife. Today I can honestly say that im a better man. Fuck what I can do in the bedroom, that will come naturally. Im more stoked about how nofap has changed my perspective on life. The shear beauty of mother nature or the genuine sight of good food..actual quality times with my kids and wife. Liberation has become my new favorite word.

  96. Guy’s comment on a forum

    I’m younger than you, and
    probably the OP as well. I’m still old enough to have started PMO with
    softcore magazines and then VHS and hardcore magazines. As bad as those
    were (and they were terrible), nothing prepared me for the crack
    cocaine of wireless internet, a laptop and porn tube sites. Instant
    access to an effectively infinite variety of porn is not good for anyone but it is especially bad for people who already have an addiction to porn/an addictive personality in general.

    I got my first laptop about 6 years ago. Porn tube sites were a new
    idea back then. I had been getting porn off P2P for years (since 1999
    or so, any new technology’s first use is porn). Again, as bad as that
    was, it was still small potatoes compared to porn tube sites. Torrents
    take time to download, and the files are huge. The instant
    gratification and endless novelty of porn tube sites did more damage to
    my sexuality in 5-6 years than all of pornography had done in the
    previous 20.

    I’ve struggled with my porn addiction for years. I quit cold turkey
    in early 2012 and deleted 400+GB of porn. I threw out a huge pile of
    burned CDs and DVDs. I went 90+ days without PMO, but I eventually fell
    off the wagon.

    I’ve made several attempts to get “clean” again, but I’ve failed one
    or or another every time. Invariably, I end back to PMO at least once a
    day, usually before bed (but often other times too.)

    This most recent time has been different. First off, I’m doing hard
    mode. It is a lot tougher, moment to moment. Weirdly, it’s easier
    overall. I have some wickedly strong impulses to look at porn and/or
    masturbate, which are more intense than anything like them that I’ve
    felt in the past. Overall though, the process has been, well, not
    easier, but I’ve felt a stronger sense of direction. I have so much
    built up sexual tension, I have to direct it somewhere
    else. I’ve begun to exercise again. This is good for a bunch of
    reasons. I’ve gotten quite overweight in my later years but also the
    endorphins exercise gives off help counteract the need for PMO.

    There was a post on here a month or so ago, saying that No Fap is not
    the be-all end-all answer, and that really struck a cord with me.
    Ceasing PMO is the first step in fixing a bunch of problems. View it as
    getting back to square one, but from there you can begin to finally
    move forward.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/1k0x7y/to_all_the_younger_members_from_an_older_dude/cbkgwq6

     

  97. “The Machine Zone: This Is Where You Go When You Just Can’t Stop

    If Facebook and other apps are this addictive, imagine how far into The Machine Zone Internet porn can carry you….

    The Machine Zone: This Is Where You Go When You Just Can’t Stop Looking at Pictures on Facebook – Atlantic Mobile

    “People love Facebook. They really love it,” Biz Stone wrote earlier this month. “My mother-in-law looks hypnotized when she decides to put in some Facebook time.”

    She is not the only one. ComScore estimates Facebook eats up 11 percent
    of all the time spent online in the United States. Its users have been
    known to spend an average of 400 minutes a month on the site.

    I know the hypnosis, as I’m sure you do, too. You start clicking through
    photos of your friends of friends and next thing you know an hour has
    gone by. It’s oddly soothing, but unsatisfying. Once the spell is
    broken, I feel like I’ve just wasted a bunch of time. But while it’s
    happening, I’m caught inside the machine, a human animated GIF: I. Just.
    Cannot. Stop.

    Or maybe it’ll come on when I’m scrolling through tweets at night before
    bed. I’m not even clicking the links or responding to people. I’m just
    scrolling down, or worse, pulling down with my thumb, reloading,
    reloading.

    Or sometimes, I get caught in the melancholy of Tumblr’s infinite scroll.

    Are these experiences, as Stone would have it, love? The tech world
    generally measures how much you like a service by how much time you
    spend on it. So a lot of time equals love. 

    My own intuition is that this is not love. It’s something much more technologically specific that MIT anthropologist Natasha Schüll calls “the machine zone.”

    “It’s Not About Winning, It’s About Getting Into the Zone”

    Schüll spent more than a decade going to Las Vegas and talking with
    gamblers and casino operators about slot machines, which have exploded
    in profitability during the digital era as game designers have optimized
    them to keep people playing.

    What she discovered is that most
    people playing the machines aren’t there to make money. They know
    they’re not going to hit the jackpot and go home. As Roman Mars put it
    in a recent episode of his awesome podcast, 99% Invisible, on Schüll’s research: “It’s not about winning; it’s about getting into the zone.”

    What
    is the machine zone? It’s a rhythm. It’s a response to a fine-tuned
    feedback loop. It’s a powerful space-time distortion. You hit a button.
    Something happens. You hit it again. Something similar, but not exactly
    the same happens. Maybe you win, maybe you don’t. Repeat. Repeat.
    Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It’s the pleasure of the repeat, the security of
    the loop.

    “Everything else falls away,” Schüll says to Mars. “A sense of monetary
    value, time, space, even a sense of self is annihilated in the extreme
    form of this zone that you enter.”

    In Schüll’s book, Addiction by Design, a gambler named Lola tells her: “I’m almost hypnotized into being that machine. It’s like playing against yourself: You are the machine; the machine is you.”

    There’s that word again: hypnotized, like Stone’s grandmother. Many
    gamblers used variations on the phrase. “To put the zone into words,”
    Schüll writes, “the gamblers I spoke with supplemented an exotic,
    nineteenth-century terminology of hypnosis and magnetism with
    twentieth-century references to television watching, computer
    processing, and vehicle driving.”

    They said things like, “You’re in a trance, you’re on autopilot. The zone is
    like a magnet, it just pulls you in and holds you there.”

    Why these words, these metaphors? We don’t cognitively grasp the
    state we fall into — we only feel its grip on us — the way we’ve
    merged circuits with the inanimate. You are the machine; the machine is you.
    And it feels … the words fail. In fact, it feels like words failing
    because it is at the edge of human experience, bleeding over into a
    cybernetic realm best expressed in data and code.

    The machine zone is the dark side of “flow,”
    a psychological state proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. In a flow
    state, there is a goal, rules for getting to the goal, and feedback on
    how that’s going. Importantly, the task has to match your skills, so
    there’s a feeling of “simultaneous control and challenge.”

    In a 1996 Wired interview,
    Csíkszentmihályi described the state like this: “Being completely
    involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time
    flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the
    previous one, like playing jazz.”

    Schüll sees a twist on this
    phenomenon in front of the new slot machines of Vegas, which incorporate
    tiny squirts of seeming control to amp up their feedback loops. But
    instead of the self-fulfillment and happiness that Csíkszentmihályi
    describes, many gamblers feel deflated and sad about their time on the
    slots.

    The games exploit the human desire for flow, but without
    the meaning or mastery attached to the state. The machine zone is where
    the mind goes as the body loses itself in the task. “You can erase it
    all at the machines,” a gambler tells Schüll. “You can even erase
    yourself.”

    You can get away from it all in the machine zone, but only as long as you stay there.

    The Facebook Zone

    When we get wrapped up in a repetitive task on our computers, I think we
    can enter some softer version of the  machine zone. Obviously, if
    you’re engaged in banter with friends or messaging your mom on Facebook,
    you’re not in that zone. If you’re reading actively and writing poems
    on Twitter, you’re not in that zone. If you’re making art on Tumblr,
    you’re not in that zone. The machine zone is anti-social, and it’s
    characterized by a lack of human connection. You might be looking at
    people when you look through photos, but your interactions with their
    digital presences are mechanical, repetitive, and reinforced by
    computerized feedback. 

    I’m not claiming that people are “addicted” to Facebook. Some of the
    gamblers quoted in Schüll’s research do in fact have serious problems.
    But I am using their stories as Schüll did — as sources of expertise on
    the zone, not to say their experience with slot machines is exactly
    like your average user’s time on Facebook.

    I point this out because there is a tendency to toss around the idea of
    addiction to various technologies like it’s no big deal. But it is.

    All of this to say: I’m not making an argument about the totality of
    services like Facebook. This is a criticism of specific behavioral loops
    that can arise within them.

    The purest example of an onramp into the machine zone is clicking
    through photo albums on Facebook. There’s nothing particularly rewarding
    or interesting about it. And yet, show me the Facebook user who hasn’t
    spent hours and hours doing just that. Why? You can find the zone.
    Click. Photo. Click. Photo. Click. Photo. And perhaps, somewhere in
    there, you find something cool (“My friend knows my cousin.”) or cute
    (“Kitten.”). Great. Jackpot! Click. Photo. Click. Photo. Click. Photo.

    Facebook is the single largest photo sharing service in the world. In 2008, when the site had 10 billion photographs archived, users pulled up 15 billion images per day. The process was occurring 300,000 per second. Click. Photo. Click.

    In 2010, Facebook had uploaded 65 billion images, and they were served up at a peak rate of 1 million per second. By 2012, Facebook users were uploading 300 million photos per day. And early this year, Facebook announced users had entrusted them with 240 billion photos.

    If we assume the ratio of photos uploaded to photos viewed has not declined precipitously, users are probably pulling up billions of Facebook photos per day at a rate of millions per second. Click. Photo. Click.

    It all adds up to a lot of time spent in the loop. According to a
    2011 ComScore report, users spend 17 percent of their time on the site
    exclusively browsing photos (which as Inside Facebook notes, doesn’t include “time spent reading news feed stories and notifications generated by photo uploads”).

    To put these numbers in perspective, ComScore’s 2013 Digital Focus
    report found that Facebook took 83 percent of the time spent on *all*
    social networks on the web. That means that of all the time spent on
    social networks, 14 percent of it occurs within this one behavioral
    loop. That’s more than all the time spent on Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter,
    and LinkedIn combined!

    timeonsocialnetworks.jpg

    If
    all technological artifacts contain certain “prescriptions” within
    them, if designers can inscribe intentions into the things they build, as in sociologist Bruno Latour’s theory, then we can say that some engagement mechanisms are more prescriptive than others. 

    What
    Facebook and slot machines share is the ability to provide fast
    feedback to simple actions; they deliver tiny rewards on an imperfectly
    predictable “payout” schedule. These are coercive loops, distorting
    whatever the original intention of the user was. What began as “See a
    picture of person X” becomes “keep seeing more pictures.” The mechanism
    itself becomes the point.

    Slot-game designers, for their part, have had to grapple with the
    ethical issues raised by exploiting the machine zone. And that grappling
    hasn’t been pretty.

    Schüll talks about one designer, Randy Adams. At first, he tells her
    that he’s “morally” opposed to being machines that enable compulsive
    behavior, which is an acknowledgement that it’s possible to do so. “But
    on this point Adams was not consistent,” she writes. “[Adams] began by
    locating addiction within the person, stating that ‘some people can’t
    control the part that turns it from fun into addiction.’ When pressed to
    specify ‘the part that turns it from fun into addiction,’ he replied:
    ‘It’s the design of the game,” and then added that this characteristic
    of design was “not intentional on our part, just the way it happened to
    evolve.'”

    What would it mean for the project of social media if we understood
    it to induce similar psychological states to machine-based gambling?
    Would Silicon Valley employees struggle with their product the way
    slot-machine designers do? I know a lot of coders and people who’ve
    worked for various social companies; they certainly don’t see themselves
    as being in the same core business as a casino. Most of them think
    they’re “doing well by doing good.”

    As a thought experiment, imagine there were incontrovertible proof
    that certain web service designs caused people to enter the machine
    zone, quadrupling time on site for a subset of users. Would designers
    outlaw their use or would they all deploy the tricks for their
    startups? 

    Things could be different. A site could encourage a
    different ethic of consumption. To be a little absurd: Why not post a
    sign after someone has looked through 100 pictures that says, “Why not
    write a friend or family member a note instead?”

    Shouldn’t these things be part of what web companies think about? Not
    just encouraging users to consume more and more, but helping them stop.

    The Problem of “Giving People What They Want”

    You could argue that designers are simply giving the people what they want. The data says people spend a lot of time looking at pictures; so, Facebook serves up the pictures. Simple as that.

    Engagement is usually the currency of the social network realm. Since
    it’s much harder to measure whether someone is actually enjoying an
    experience than it is to measure the number of minutes someone spends
    doing it, engagement is typically measured by time. And so, Silicon
    Valley has made the case to itself (and to the users of its software)
    that we are voting with our clicks.

    But there’s a problem. A definition of “what people want” got smuggled
    in with the data. The definition starts logically: People go to sites
    they like. But then it gets wobblier. They say that the more time you
    spend on a site or part of a site, the more you like it. Of course, that
    completely elides the role the company itself plays in shaping user
    behavior to increase consumption. And it ignores that people sometimes
    (often?) do things to themselves that they don’t like. Who “likes”
    spending hours flipping channels — and yet it’s been a core part of the
    American experience for decades.

    What if the 400 minutes a month people spend on Facebook is mostly
    (or even partly) spent in the machine zone, hypnotized, accumulating ad
    impressions for the company?

    Here’s my contention: Thinking about
    the machine zone and the coercive loops that initiate it has great
    explanatory power. It explains the “lost time” feeling I’ve had on
    various social networks, and that I’ve heard other people talk about. It
    explains how the more Facebook has tuned its services, the more people
    seem to dislike the experiences they have, even as they don’t abandon
    them. It helps explain why people keep going back to services that suck
    them in, even when they say they don’t want to.

    It helps me understand why social media, which began with the good
    intention of connecting people, has become such a fraught subject. Among
    the tech savvy, it is seen as an act of bravery to say, “I love Facebook.” 

    Because
    designers and developers interpreted maximizing “time on site,”
    “stickiness,” “engagement,” as giving people what they wanted, they
    built a system that elicits compulsive responses from people that they
    later regret. 

    At the very least, the phenomenon of the machine zone has to become a
    part of the way we talk about the pleasures of the Internet. Perhaps,
    over the long run, these problems will self-correct. I’m not so sure,
    though: The economic forces at the heart of ad-supported social networks
    basically require maximizing how much time people spend on a site,
    generating ad impressions. 

    It just so happens that the user
    behavioral patterns that are most profitable for Facebook and other
    social networks are precisely the patterns that they’ve interpreted to
    mean that people love them. It’s almost as if they determined what would
    be most profitable and then figured out how to justify that as serving
    user needs. 

    But I actually don’t believe that. You can say many
    things about the entrepreneurs, designers, and coders who create social
    networking companies, but they believe in what they do. They’re more
    likely to be ideologues than craven financial triangulators. And they
    spend all day on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest,
    too. I bet they know the machine zone, too. And that’s why I have hope
    they might actually stop designing traps. 

    In any case, fighting
    the great nullness at the heart of these coercive loops should be one of
    the goals of technology design, use, and criticism. 

    In the great tradition of the Valley, we’ll make a t-shirt: Just Say No To The Machine Zone.

  99. Re: the damage of different porn types?

    Re: the damage of different porn types?
    I would think so, I escalated from small images to full HD images to full HD movies then eventually comic book porn/fantasy in high res. My view of women was/is so warped, but rebooting is helping immensely. For the first time in my life I have more pure yet horny thoughts about women.

     

  100. something I want to say about pornography

    something I want to say about pornography

    by T0nyk1llaz

    It emasculates men. I think back to the generations who lived their lives without it. The guys who fought through the Great Depression, the 2 world wars, the guys who worked their asses off all day and poured their energy into their family. They put all their focus on that family unit. Say what you will about the sexism of that day, but you can’t deny that the men back then were 100% real men that were probably a lot more satisfied with themselves compared to the way a lot of us feel today. I think of the quotes I’ve read in “Fight Club” where it basically said that today we as an entire generation no Great War, no defining moment. We have a spiritual war going on inside, we feel lost. When I look at myself, I see some of the damage that porn has done to my morals. I feel like I’m lacking in pride and I feel lost at times. I also look at the crap that the media puts in females heads. I see Miley Cyrus, who seems to care less about the influence she has over all those little girls that used to watch her on the Disney Channel. Girls are told that you have to meet this image to be fulfilled. While all this is going on, YOUNG guys are getting ED. We’re losing confidence in our ability, and we’re also getting distant from females. Our tastes are changing into things we’re embarrassed about. And we feel shame about it. It’s really been killing us. So congratulations to each of you for taking control. At some point, you’ll be free and you’ll be one of those who has been there before, but survived and came out without any scars. Good luck.

     

  101. EXTREME Addict. Need Help.

    Hey Guys

    I’m 22 years old and I have been exposed to porn since I was 8 I believe. It started with harmless pictures of women on adverts in magazines. It progressed into watching (softcore) porn with a friend who found those in his parents bedroom. We started browsing the web for porn out of curiosity and because it was funny for us as kids(we didn’t understand it ).

    My father noticed what we did in the internet and installed a porn filter for several years till I was maybe about 14 or something.So I fapped to pictures of women in magazines and imagined girls from school and such.

    I became older and the filter was gone the internet was pretty much open for me. It started harmless with pictures of naked pornstars(14-15) but my desire grew and porn was just so compelling…. I went to youporn daily by age of 16 and started downloading of complete porn movies because the youporn clips started to get boring.

    Until today I’m browsing the web for hours daily ,maybe 2 hours on average each day to better my porn collection and to fap on the edge to keep this feeling.My tastes are getting extremer and extremer sometimes i watch incest stuff or even animals fucking women,dickgirls/futanari…Because it gets more difficult to excite me , i’ve seen pretty much everything one can see ….

    So a month ago I noticed this page yourbrainonporn.com + NoFap and realised in what deep shit i’ve gotten into. This addiction is ruining my life : it wastes a lot of my time (2h per day on average ! ) My interest in real women is weak since i can have them always on my screen. I makes me tired ,depressed, apathetic ,inactive , socially anxious, and I still don’t have a complete facial hair (this might have something todo with fapping) => I feel like a boy rather than a man. I have an emotional relationship to my porn collection. I can’t delete it (it was alot of work gathering all of it (about 200gb))

    So I started with small steps in my reboot. I tried not to ejaculate for the longest time possible.And 3 days was my max but I couldn’t resist to edge and watch porn though.. Today was my second day in another run and I relapsed bad. I watched porn for about 8 hours… And ejaculated two times. After one day of abstinence I start to feel pressure in my prostate and especially when i have to pee I get really horny and then I get the urge to unload this pressure. It becomes unbearable. I can’t do anything productive in that time.Even if I resist this day will become a useless day where I do nothing else then to resist my urge.And since i’m studying I HAVE to fap to be somewhat productive.

    I’m not an ugly guy or something I had alot of chances to get a girl but porn destroyed my interest in them and I always refused to get into a relationship and now i’m in this viscous cycle and can’t get out.

    At least I have realised that i’ve got a problem .

    Should I get professional help ? What do you say ? Any hope ?

    EXTREME Addict. Need Help.

     

  102. Porn is not art.

    Porn is not art.

    Whenever I used to watch a porn video, I would always skip in about a third of the way, looking to make an instant judgement on it before skipping to the next one.

    Quite recently I realised that I started to do this with everything: skipping about a minute into a song and letting it play for a few seconds before deciding whether I liked it or not; only watching the first few minutes of a TV programme before getting bored; even reading online articles, telling myself I had read enough to get the gist of it only a few lines in.

    I think there are two main points I’ve taken from this:

    • Porn is not art. Its purpose is to provide instant satisfaction, not a lasting, meaningful effect.
    • Porn stopped me appreciating everything else. Now that I have stopped watching porn, I appreciate things in their entirety. Music, films, books, all seem better now that I am actively looking for that meaningful effect, and not just instant satisfaction.

  103. On the topic of desensitization. (a bit off topic)

    On the topic of desensitization. (a bit off topic)

    by asschap83 daysSo since starting nofap i’ve realized how desensitized i had been to sexually explicit images and material. But it also made me think about the other odd things im exposed to on the internet/reddit. I often browse /r/wtf and view videos and pictured of some extreme gore and other fucked up things out there.

    I don’t even bat an eye at some really messed up things.

    Is this something I should also keep an eye on?

    It can kind of weird me out than seeing extreme gore doesn’t even make me think twice. When it came to porn I could look at tons and not really get excited much but after my streak little things can really effect me.

    So im kind of curious, is seeing this other odd internet stuff also bad for my brain in a similar way porn is? Just something I noticed and thought we could discuss. Please respond with your thoughts!

  104. porn warps your mind. I know because I’m there. I feel isolated

    I want to believe that there is help. That somehow my mind can return to the state it once was in before I basically binged on porn. I want “experts” to stop telling me that it’s healthy. I want people to feel what I feel so they can understand what it’s like.

    I feel like my sexuality has been hijacked and you know what? It’s all my fault. I want help. I just want someone to confirm that it is possible to reclaim yourself and let go of this ugly shit. I would give anything to go back 3 years ago, smash the fuck out of my laptop, and tell myself that porn will change you.

    You guys should have seen me. I defended porn to death! I believed every positive thing an expert said and when people said that they had porn addictions I truly didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe that it could desensitize you, cause ED, or anything of the sort.

    Look at me now, though. That’s how I know this shit fucks you up. Some people it may have no effect, but for me, I noticed slight changes that kept happening over time and they weren’t good. Sex in my dreams went from awesome and amazing to shit in the course of these 3 years. I hate most of my sex dreams and sometimes they don’t even make sense. If there is anyone out there who can help or who has success with no fap, I’d love to hear it.

    I feel like the world, whose side I was once on, is against me now. Psychologists don’t even recognize it in the DSM so that basically eliminates therapy. I’ve seen every type of porn you can think of (minus illegal stuff) and I feel like if I tell a therapist that they’re going to tell me I’m bi or something, or of course the magic psychological-thriller paradox that I’ve been that way the whole time and didn’t know it.

    I know who I am, which is something people take years to figure out, and this is not me. I miss my dreams when they made sense, I miss everything about who I was before I got way heavy into this. Point me in the right direction fapstronauts. Tell me there is some real hope in this.

    porn warps your mind. I know because I’m there. I feel isolated and alone. (self.NoFap)

    by sos_call

  105. our leading sexologist telling to the all young adolescent

    Hmm, interesting read and definitely true. This problem is really really serious and very deep. For example me, I’m from Czech Republic and a few years after regime change we had this radio broadcast show “red ears” by one of our leading sexologist telling to the all young adolescent generation that porn and masturbation is healthy and there’s nothing to worry about. Now, 15 years later he’s making money from erection stimulating pills. But still, everybody loves him.

    Victims of the information age…

  106. ED fading, I already know I’m never going back

    Thoughts on 20 day check-in, ED fading, I already know I’m never going back

    Last Saturday night, I met a girl I’ve been messaging with on OKcupid – I hadn’t PMO’ed in over two weeks and was already feeling changes, but imagine my surprise when we were making out in her car and later in my bed – no sex, but I had no problems achieving an erection – not necessarily 100%, but certainly adequate enough. We didn’t have sex (hoping to see her this week) but having a functional penis again in the presence of a real-life beautiful woman was certainly a cause for celebration.

    I’m so embarrassed that I have to type this stuff out, but it just shows how insidious and deeply-entrenched a porn habit can be. For years, it was just a part of my regular routine, like brushing my teeth in the mornings. PMOing was like eating a piece of candy, except instead of hunger, I was indulging anytime I felt anxious or bored or lonely or I had ten minutes to kill, because ejaculating feels better than not ejaculating.

    My emotions are coming back, and I’m finally starting to feel content and satisfied with who I am as a person now that I don’t have this fog of shame borne out of secretiveness. When I see pretty ladies at the bar, I no longer have to think about how they’d react if they saw how I spent so many hours of my life, hunched in front of a computer with glazed over eyes, masturbating to movies of women who don’t even know (or care) I exist.

    I’m 32, so I’m still young, but I can’t imagine how much more I would have loved my life before this if I hadn’t been immersed in porn and the toxic, self-defeating, life-sucking mindset that comes with it. It truly is a cycle of shame – you feel bad, at least on a subconscious level, because you KNOW that people outside your house are enjoying sex and relationships while you’re hiding away from everyone, fucking your fist and not feeling good about it afterwards.

    It’s true – you have to WANT to quit. You have to realise on your own that this habit does nothing positive for you besides a few moments of escape and pleasure in exchange for your self-respect, self-esteem, and self-worth. Imagine being able to walk around with the knowledge that you don’t need to spend hours and hours looking at pictures and movies of 2-D women. It’s like professional wrestling – nobody in their right minds believes that real life is anything like that, so why would people think that porn has any parallels with real sex?

    Another thing we have to understand is that we’re the first generation that has had to solve this problem for ourselves. No other population in history has had unlimited access to this much porn, and more is being produced every day. No previous generation has been brainwashed and programmed so directly with this amount of porn – even the worst perverts of the past had to leave the adult bookstore and peep show after closing time.

    To end this on a positive note, I’m finally being able to envision myself in a long-term relationship, getting married, and doing “couple” things like celebrating anniversaries, taking trips, holding hands in public and all those lovely things I’ve always wanted but could never legitimately envision for myself when I was deep in the porn jungle. With every year that passed when I felt confused and depressed, I was still watching porn, still getting off on surgically-enhanced women participating in cartoonish scenarios that they’d likely never do if they weren’t getting paid. It’s so ridiculous – as a smart person, how did I waste so much of my life on this? I used to make fun of guys who spent four years of their life playing WoW, but porn use is far worse and I have no room to talk.

    Here’s to a new year, a new me, and every new day I don’t spend distracted by fantasy and craving my next fix.
     

  107. This place is gonna be bigger than you guys realize

    I’m in my 40’s. when I was a kid, it took a lot of hunting and a lot if luck to score a penthouse or playboy magazine. And even then,those girls needed to last you an entire month, maybe longer.

    Even with the introduction of VHS tapes, porn still took a lot of effort. The stress of sneaking into an adult store. Dropping $20 per tape. It was pricey and you had to find time to go the tough parts of town for privacy. DVD’s did not change that model.

    The affect of high- speed Internet access was profound. More girls in 5 minutes of surfing than would be contained in 24 months of playboy. Videos not photos.

    What no one could study was the long term effects. A good section of male society disconnecting more and more from the real world and the real women around them.

    A couple of decades in, and these males are waking up to the consequences. Diminished libido, ED, depression.

    I think there’ll be a groundswell of people coming here for solace, healing and help. 

    This place is gonna be bigger than you guys realize

     

     

  108. here’s a substantial difference between the printed pornography

    45 year old here. Based on my own experience, I would say there’s a substantial difference between the printed pornography of the first @25 years of my life and what is available now.

    Frequency

    When I was a kid, I had occasional access to things like Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler. Kids couldn’t buy the magazines, so we had to sneak peaks from male relatives. If we actually got our hands on a magazine, we had to figure out where to hide it. Usually that meant somewhere outside, where other kids could find it or it could be destroyed by the elements. Later, even if your family had a VCR (mine didn’t), you had to find time alone to watch the video. Compare either of those to being able to view thousands of images and scores of videos in a single day. And like sane-ish pointed out, even when I was older there was a shame factor associated with buying it.

    Intensity

    I can’t stress this enough- there are music videos and commercials today that are more erotic than the things that were available back in the day. And the things that are available for free on the Web today were unimaginable to me even into my twenties. And I am not particularly sheltered or inhibited- quite the opposite. To my sorrow and shame, there are things that I found abhorrent even in my thirties that I would still really like to see more of today- first sickening, then exciting, then simply arousing.

    If I’d had access to the internet and internet porn as a young man your age, I don’t know if I would have graduated from high school and almost certainly not have graduated from college. I don’t know if I would have a wife, a family, or a life worth living. My heart goes out to you guys- you have one hell of a dragon to slay.

     

    I’m 48 years old. In chronological order, I was addicted to 1) soft core magazines like Playboy 2) raunchier magazines like High Society and Hustler 3) hard core magazines and video booths at adult bookstores 4) peep shows 5) strip clubs 6) VHS porn 7) dialup Internet porn 8) broadband Internet porn.

    So yes, people got addicted before high-speed Internet came along. But with high-speed Internet, there is zero barrier to entry (even negative barrier to entry – it shows up when you don’t want it to), it’s completely free as in beer, it’s socially acceptable, and there is so much of it, you can consume it all day every day, without seeing the same thing twice. That makes it way, way more addictive. I am so glad it wasn’t available when I was young – I would have ruined my life with it.

    One-third (33%) of men between the ages of 18 and 30 either think that they are addicted or are unsure if they are addicted to pornography

  109. The big change in porn viewing from 1980es to present era.

    I was struck yesterday by virgins talking about their porn use. It made me think about my childhood. Back then porn was something that people did watch and consume but it came with a great stigma.

    Few decent family men or even virgin men would walk into a video rental and rent porn. They might come into a possession of a porn mag or two. But even that was something that people were ashamed of.

    Now porn is openly celebrated. Advertised in public spaces. It is available at every device.

    There has been a lot of talk about how this has been a great thing. That we have been liberated from the old uptight attitudes.

    But now that people start have problems due to porn use it makes me wonder whether this liberation has been good or bad.

    The slow degradation of the “moral backbone” that no one seems to have anymore. Including me. Which I am trying to build up again.

    Because I suffer due to porn use. Because it is not good for me.

    And now with the studies coming out. About changes in the brain. So much of my own behavior just suddenly makes sense.

    I know my heart skips a beat at just a few pixels on a risque advertisement, in a way that a few pixels should not.

    I remember computer being for playing. Working. But somehow this screen became a portal for sex. I have a wife. We barely have sex. We have had a lot of problems due to porn.

    And still at 113 days out. I am looking at this screen. Full aware that my brain is still stuck in the thought that sex lies behind this screen. Endless amounts of sex. And when I do not let myself do it.

    I am depressed..

    I wish I had been adult in 1980es. Believing that porn is bad for me.

    I feel bad for you kids who are told that porn is not bad.

    How could you resist it. With the current attitude. .

    The big change in porn viewing from 1980es to present era.

  110. had sex with a porn star and couldnt keep it up

    This is how bad PMO is

    this was a while ago, but last February I fucked pornstar (she was pricey prostitute) and i could barely keep it up with her… the same girl I fapped off to in porn.

    I COULD FAP TO A FUCKING PORNSTAR, BUT WAS BARELY ABLE TO FUCK HER IN PERSON

    that’s how much porn fucked my life up.

    I’ve been struggling with nofap but i have faith ill make it a long term lifestyle. no fap helps a lot. it will work. i will overcome.

    just needing a little encouragement. thanks guys

    had sex with a porn star and couldnt keep it up

     

  111. I dont even want to masterbate, I just want the tabs open,

    Every time i’m dealing with an urge, I tell myself that its fine to masterbate without porn, and that I can if I really feel like I need to release tension, and immediately I feel that I have absolutely no desire to do that… I want to get on my laptop and spend the next 20 minutes finding that perfect picture, then move from that to videos, then the MO just comes with it. Its the chase that gets me. The further I stay away from the chase, the better everything else gets. I think I need to smash my phone and computer with a brick.

    I dont even want to masterbate, I just want the tabs open, the searching, the new content, the excitement.

  112. More than three decades of feeding my brain with P.

    This is the phases I went through during the last 30+ years. (April, 2015)

    PHASE 1 – Mainly Fantasies

    Rewind to 1981. It all started pretty simple. Found some arousing pictures here and there when I was around the age of 11. When I was home alone this was enough to enjoy myself, so to speak. Saw some nude scenes every once in a while on television, enough memories to go on for some time 🙂

    PHASE 2 – Magazines

    At the time you where considered a pussy if you didn’t own at least a couple of Playboy magazines. I even put some centerfolds on my wall and my dad approved, seeing me as a healthy young boy 🙂

    Still wonder how these magz became so :crunchy: – lol

    PHASE 3 – Erotic channels and VCR

    Now forward to 1985. The first time I was introduced to porn movies was in the famous Dutch FilmNet Night Club era. From 23:00 to early in the morning this was the place to be if you wanted to see the heavy action. We had a subscription to all channels. For a 15 year old boy, this was too good to be true. A lot of sleepless nights and a lot of wet towels 🙂 It got even better when I got my first VCR recorder. This allowed me to record my favorite stars and play it back during the day when I was home alone. I think 50% of all my tapes was P at the time. Carefully hidden in a box or labelled ”The Universe” and stuff 🙂

    PHASE 4 – The Internet and DVD

    Then 10 years later. 1995. Life was good, gorgeous girlfriend, lots and lots of sex. But during the relationship I discovered online porn. Started out with static images. When she was at work and my libido skyrocketted again, I would go online (you had to dial in then :)) and downloaded some fresh material. Movies where still too big for quick downloads, so initially I kept at static images. Rented some erotic stuff with girlfriend every once in a while, but didn’t turn me on like the stuff I downloaded from newsgroups.

    PHASE 5 – High Speed Internet

    Forward to 2005. Marriage. Libido started going out of sync with wife. The birth of online P sites. Started downloading movies now. Damn, so many hot women, so little time. Started collecting favorites, got really creative in getting the perfect ejac, sick 🙂

    PHASE 6 – More, newer, novelty, comfort, fantasy world

    It’s 2010. Divorce. Stuck in my tiny world, dropped friends, amped up the P intake 🙂 Gigabytes and Gigabytes of HQ stuff, neatly organized by ”actress”, PMO almost daily, social activities to a minimum. Going from ass-man to boobs-man and back again. Even my brain doesn’t know anymore what my real preference is. If I came home to an empty house, alcohol and PMO made me relax. Next day, all over again.

    PHASE 7 – Too much of anything is not good for you

    It’s now 2014. Even the hottest girls in videos don’t automatically turn me on anymore. They have to be in a certain position, have certain proportions and certain looks to trigger arousal. All other ”material” is just there to occupy space on my network (grown to epic proportions).

    PHASE 8 – Why? Stop this downward spiral!

    Jan 2015. I’m once again on a PMO binge. Three times in two days. My body and brain are exhausted. Instead of going out and chasing women, I’m going through my current collection to find anything that can heal my inner pain. When I ejaculate for the i-dont-know-which-1000th-time, something breaks. Why? Why??

    And then during as search for people with similar problems I find NoFap. Read stories. Feel the pain and struggle everyone’s going through. Lurk for a couple of weeks and then I create an account, post some. Drop it again coz I feel ashamed. Create another one. Drop it.

    And then my first real try. Badge and all. Two weeks. And then another two weeks. And then another week. Currently on the 4th try, but gaining momentum. After all, 3 MO’s in about 6 weeks is quite nice for a NoFap beginner.

    So, to make this far too long story short. It will only get worse over time and it’s time to quit once and for all.

    TL;DR: I’ve been escalating P in the last 30+ years, know almost every star/actress, but now I’m done with this shit 😀

    LINK – More than three decades of feeding my brain with P. Almost prehistoric, so call me Fapster Erectus 🙂

    by -h2o-

     

  113. 10 Hours of my vacation are gone because of porn.

    “I’ll just spend a few minutes online…” This is what I said to myself at 10:00 pm last night.

    I’m on vacation. I’m broke, so I have nothing else to do, nowhere to go. So the answer was porn. In spite of having shelf after shelf of dvds, books, and not to mention a full tank of gas and beautiful weather.

    10 pm last night I sat down and started down the rabbit-hole of porn. I even remarked to myself that I wasn’t really turned on by any of the images or videos I saw… I was just passing time. Then its teeth sank into me… and deeper down the rabbit-hole I went. It was no longer about eroticism, or ‘getting-off’… it was more about finding the more shocking or novel situation or image. I found myself looking and searching for very oddly specific things that would give me an adrenaline spike.

    In spite of sitting in the same position, my body screaming out for me to get up and move, for me to get something to eat, for me close my eyes and go to sleep, I allowed myself to be held in this extremely powerful grip… I recognized that I was tumbling further and further down the rabbit-hole… I came across images that I had seen before… thinking to myself “Oh I saw this the other day… or was it just a couple of hours ago?” I found myself rationalizing: “I’ve spent 4 hours online looking at porn… so what, I’m on vacation. I don’t have anywhere I need to be tomorrow…” 4 hours became 6… 6 became 8… 8 hours! 8 hours that I could have been sleeping… or at the very least, reading a book, or… something, ANYTHING else… EIGHT HOURS!

    I said to myself OUT LOUD “Holy crap! You’ve just wasted 8 freakin’ hours!” I didn’t get off once… not once… and I realize this is probably too much information, and I apologize, but I physically was not prone to do so. EIGHT HOURS! That’s an entire sleep schedule, work schedule… that’s eight hours I could have done something constructive… I’m still stunned! But I wasn’t done yet. It was 6 am, and I had not moved from the spot I sat down in at 10 pm the night before.

    Even after chastising myself and calling myself out, out loud for wasting 8 hours at my computer… I didn’t move… I did not turn off my computer and walk away… The sun came up… my body hurt… I was starving… dehydrated (not why you’d think)… still… I forged on… at 8 am I found the the single video that I had been searching for… or what I thought I wanted to find… something with a very specific set of circumstances… I found it… and I didn’t even find it remotely erotic or interesting… it was just the mere fact that I found it that finally led to me sighing with a kind of relief and self-loathing… I shut my computer… stood up… my legs and back wobbled. I had to take a few moments to steady myself and get the blood circulating back in my body… I walked downstairs… greeted the landscapers as they rolled in to do their work for the day… I lit up a cigarette… stinking from not having showered… body cramped (and chaffed… again, sorry, TMI)… it was time to wake up… but all I could think about was going to sleep… I came back upstairs to find that my sweet little kitty was now awake and wanted to play… I ignored her and rolled myself into bed and fell asleep.

    I have 3.5 days of vacation left.

    10 Hours of my vacation are gone because of porn.

  114. This is why artificial stimulation f***s your brain up!!!

    Ok here is a short story that happened to me and I realized in another way how disastrous chronic use of porn has been to my brain:

    I was in vacation with my girlfriend and I was still partially suffering from PIED and still addicted to porn. We were on the deck of a ship and she was wearing some short shorts revealing the most of her legs. I decided to take some photos of the sea and of her. When I pointed my phone towards her in order to take a picture of her sitting, I saw her on my screen. THE VIEW OF HER AND HER LEGS ON MY SCREEN SUDDENLY SET ME OFF AND WOKE MY SEXUAL INSTINCTS UP, WHILE THE ACTUAL VIEW OF HER WAS TOTALLY INDIFFERENT TO ME AT THE SAME TIME!!!

    I guess my brain has learned to connect sexual desire and excitement with the view of a screen more than with the view of an actual woman…

    How sad.

    Don’t become like this guys..!

    This is why artificial stimulation f***s your brain up!!! EXPERIENCE

     

  115. I Didn’t Realize How Long I’ve Been Influenced by Porn

    I just recently watched a YouTube video talking about how Porn “tube sites” really got going around 2006. It made me think about how the first time I was showed porn was around 2008. Even though I didn’t really start seeking it until 2009, I realize how I truly had no idea on what effect it would have on me. I was introduced to it at the “perfect” time, I was just entering my adolescence and had not had any sexual contact with a female yet, although my hormones were just beginning to activate. Even though I still got erections from real life girls like crazy, I think over time my brain just acclimated to the screen and my body stopped reacting to things like scent and touch sometime last year. That’s was when I got really scared about not being able to perform with real woman so I quit cold turkey in August 2015. Still have sex and MO but definitely no porn since.

    The point I’m trying to make is that education is key. If I would have known that repeated masturbation to things that are idealized and extreme would cause me to develop health problems in the future, I believe my younger self would have stopped immediately. There is a massive amount of young kids that are going to grow up with immediate and unlimited access to porn anytime and anywhere. Honestly I think we as a society need to do a better job with educating the young on the potential negative effects of porn in the long term, before there is a mass problem of sexual dysfunction issues.

    I think this will be a huge relatively new problem, because the previous generation did not peak/grow up with immediately accessible porn the way (my) the new generation has. Their brains were not “altered” in the way that ours is. The problem that many are going to start to have will not be below he belt–it will be linked directly to the brain, such as PIED and anxiety induced ED. These are problems which are not so easily treatable by pills.

    Tl;dr We need to do a better job about educating kids on the negative effects of porn.

    I Didn’t Realize How Long I’ve Been Influenced by Porn

  116. Cuckolding disaster.

    My wife and I have been married for 2 years last month. For a while now I have been into the idea of cuckolding. I watched cuckold porn for months and it was (and still is) incredibly arousing to me. I talked to several people online about it as well. I finally worked up the courage to ask my wife to do it before our anniversary. She was reluctant because she thought it would end badly but I kept pushing because I knew that I liked it and eventually she agreed.

    We found a few guys online, and after finding the right one we went through with it last week. He was a very attractive guy – 6′ tall, muscular, big dick – everything every guy wishes they had. When he came over I opened the door and we talked for a little while and then I introduced my wife. We went to the bedroom and I sat on the couch while he started to kiss her neck and undress her. He pushed her onto the bed, took off her panties and started eating her out. They were both loving it and so was I. Then he took his pants off and got on top of her and after kissing her for a little while he pinned her hands over her head and penetrated her; she moaned deeply. It was at this moment that my stomach dropped; hot to cold in a millisecond. I very quickly realized that when I was watching cuckold porn, I wasn’t getting off on being the cuck, I was getting off on being the bull. I felt sick, but I didn’t know what to do; they were already fucking. I sat there, saying nothing. Luckily, after a few minutes, he finished. After it was all done, I rushed him out, told her to get cleaned up and I went to get some Chinese food. I sat in my car crying for 20 minutes until it was ready and then went home and pretended nothing was wrong.

    For the past week I have been doing my best to clench my teeth and try to forget about it, but I can’t. The way she moaned, the way she grabbed him, the way she looked at him. I cannot get it out of my head. Knowing that I actually let another man, let alone a guy who’s much more masculine and attractive than myself, fuck my wife makes me sick to my stomach.. I honestly want to kill myself and it seems like the best solution right now. I genuinely can’t look at myself in the mirror without feeling disgusted. The worst part is that it’s completely my fault. I don’t know what to do. I really really need some advice. I’ve never felt this hopeless before.

    [Cuckolding] disaster.

  117. Our culture has change DRASTICALLY when it comes to porn

    It’s amazing how culture changes, and by God did it change DRASTICALLY when it comes to porn.

    Not that long ago, within some of our lifetimes, porn itself was taboo. It was ascribed with every negative moniker in the book, and so too were those who consumed it.

    That, however, pretty much did a complete 180. Now, the thing that’s taboo, especially amongst young people around my age (19), is pointing out the harms of porn. Saying disparaging things about porn, saying that porn ought not to be watched, sets off explosive reactions in people. Even mentioning that you’re going porn-free will have people getting defensive.

    Why is this the case, and why now? The answer is simple – (nearly) everyone our age consumes it. With the advent of the internet, people have access to such a huge, insurmountable stockpile of porn, and unless you have a porn blocker, porn is at most 5 clicks away at any given time. Pair this with the fact that we are constantly surrounded by computers, phones, what-have-you, endless porn is 15 seconds away from you for whole life.

    It’s an epidemic – pretty much everyone does it. Cognitive Dissonance is the stress one experiences when they have a belief that contradicts their action – Cognitive Dissonance Theory suggests that the easiest way to resolve this contradiction and hence what people end up doing is to change their beliefs. When someone is addicted to porn, they will more than likely change their beliefs about it. They will insist to themselves and society that it’s ok, but this conviction is ONLY there because of the action that they can’t quit.

    This is why people get explosive when you question porn. They take it as an attack on themselves – “How dare you question my vices!”. When you attack porn you expose the flimsy conviction they arrived at from worshipping their desires. That gets them uber defensive. To concede that porn is bad would mean that they’re back to experiencing cognitive dissonance – this is SO MANY addicts of all vices insist that what they’re doing is not bad.

    You get explosive reactions when you attack alcohol in front of an alcoholic, or cigarettes in front of a smoker, or even more recently, video game addiction in front of a gamer. This, of course, is what we see with porn. Try attacking porn on reddit (other than subs like this ofc), and you will get downvoted to hell.

    When this climate of “porn is normal” arises, people will genuinely be convinced because of the zeitgeist that it’s ok. Everyone else is doing it, everyone’s saying it’s normal, so no harm, right? That’s when people get an addiction that they feel no need quit, until they start seeing the catastrophe of it for themselves.

    The taboo against going porn-free; Why people get so upset when you talk of the evils of porn, and the epidemic this is causing

     

  118. Finally lost my virginity, and during it I was imagining porn

    I started jerking off at 15.

    I started watching porn at 16.

    I’ve been watching it and jerking off to it more or less consistently since then, for the past 7 years.

    A few years ago I tried /r/nofap pretty obsessively, then I found /r/pornfree and realized that was the more important issue; after that, I became very anti-porn, while still not being able to shake the habit–despite a clean stretch of 6 months, I always, inevitably, ended up coming back.

    For a long time, so far in my adult life actually, I identified as a /r/foreveralone, and almost an /r/incel, though not to those extremes. A combination of social anxiety, depression and severe self-image and self-esteem issues culminated in me being one very lonely, afraid, self-loathing, resentful, envious, and at times self-harming young adult.

    That was my life, that was my identity, and that was what I would be until the day I died, presumably within the next five or so years when I would finally work up the courage to kill myself with the quick pull of a trigger, instead of the slow process of drinking and self-sabotaging and refusing to take care of myself.

    Then three months ago, out of nowhere, this girl showed up in my life who changed everything.

    I’m now in therapy twice a week, I’m learning to love and accept myself, I have a social life, and I’m pretty sure I’m in love with this woman. She’s 12 years older than I am but she doesn’t seem like she is. She act younger, she looks younger. And she’s told me I look and act older than most guys my age. We became friends instantly and pretty quickly became partners with a very deep emotional bond. We’ve both been through some shit and we’ve both learned to deal with it in different ways. She’s showed me that I’ve been doing life wrong and that living CAN be a profound experience full of excitement, wonder, confusion, joy, and occasional but inevitable pain and suffering. I no longer want to die. I want to live, and I want to experience life with her.

    But that old identity that I constructed for myself over the years…it hasn’t gone away. It’s still there, and it’s eating away at me. I don’t need to explain to you guys how porn fucked up my brain, after being deprived of intimacy and physical contact for the first 23 years of my life, because you all know how it works. I knew, deep down, that it was messing with my perception, distorting it and twisting it all around into unrecognizable shapes, but it took finally losing my virginity, to this person I care deeply about and am attracted to not only physically, but emotionally, to fully realize how damaged my conscience is by years of internet porn.

    My biggest worry about losing the v-card was that I’d finish too quickly. The opposite was true. I couldn’t finish, at all. I had to do it myself. She was totally cool with it, and understood, because she knew going solo was what I was used to, but she doesn’t know how deep it goes. I’m attracted to her normally, when she’s dressed, but once the clothes come off, something changes in my head. Suddenly I just realize she’s not any of those thousands of girls in porn with impossibly perfect bodies, she’s a real person. And I love her. I love her personality, I love her smile, and I love her soul. She cares so deeply about me and is always saying how in love with me she is, and I am too, except for the physical attraction part. I literally could not stay aroused during sex. I stayed hard without much trouble, but I just wasn’t into it. I didn’t feel anything. Not during intercourse, not during handjobs, not during oral, but during and ONLY during masturbation. It had to be ME, and MY hand, and what’s worse, MY imagination doing all the work. No matter what she did or said, no matter how much I looked at her and tried to reason with myself, I couldn’t feel anything. I was just going through the motions, with no feeling.

    I did end up finishing, twice, and both times were from self-stimulation, and both times I wasn’t with her mentally, I was off somewhere else, switching between tabs opened from bookmarked memories, images and sequences and sounds from a terrifyingly large database of pixels burned into my brain. That’s how I got off. I had to watch porn in my head.

    That’s fucked.

    There’s this amazing woman who means more to me than anyone or anything else in this world, who saved my life by becoming a part of it, who I love on a profound, almost cosmic level, that’s how powerful it is. She’s my best friend and I love her and I miss her every second I’m not with her. But there’s this unsettlingly dominant part of my head that would rather fuck 100 other girls over her, girls younger and more attractive, girls who don’t care about me, girls I don’t care about. Maybe it’s because I haven’t gotten the chance yet to be with anyone else, or to experience any of that, but I crave it. That’s the one thing that makes me uncertain about being with her, to dedicating myself to her and only her. I still feel like a horny teenager with raging hormones who salivates over every hot female he sees, and wants to do all this stuff to them, kinky and sometimes degrading stuff based on what I’ve seen–seen, not felt–in years and years of watching porn. It’s all visual. All these things that turn me on and get me going, these specific interests and triggers that get me hard and get me off, they’re all visual stimuli. There’s no feeling involved, no touch, no smell, no taste, no emotion. Just visuals and sounds, but mostly visuals. And that’s how my brain has wired itself now. It’s not at all how I imagined it, when I’m actually in the moment, experiencing it for real, there’s no pleasure, there’s no arousal, no excitement, just…emptiness, emptiness where there should be something special. I feel disconnected and ashamed with myself now that I’m finally using my body to get what I’ve wanted for years, and the only way I can satisfy my desires, like I have been for the past 8 years, to do it to myself. And when I’m away from her and I start wanting it, I know where to go. All I have to do is open my laptop, the one lover who’s always been there for me.

    Even when there’s no screen in front of me, the images are still there. I can summon them and conjure them at will and use them to make myself cum, while I’m looking my girlfriend in the eyes, while she’s just with me in that moment, and I’m off in some unknown hotel bedroom or kitchen or bathroom with another woman who I’ll never meet. It feels sickening to me. It literally feels like cheating. I watched porn just 30 minutes ago and jerked off and orgasmed and it felt amazing and emptying and emotionally draining in the way it always does, and my girlfriend is out of town for the next few days, and I swear to god, I feel like I’ve been unfaithful to her. I love her with all my heart, but my brain only has eyes for everyone else. I’m a piece of shit human being.

    I finally lost my virginity, and during it I was watching porn in my head

  119. Think about it, if you were horny in the 90’s, you’d have to go to the shops and buy a playboy magazine or a VCR tape, or you’d just jack of to models in catalogues.

    But now, with the advent of the internet, you can view literally 1000’s of different naked girls and 100’s of sex acts across 100’s of genres in a single session. EXTREMELY EASILY AND PRIVATELY

    In my lifetime, I have, no exaggeration, seen millions of naked girls and tens of thousands of sex videos.

    I am ashamed of myself for this perverted behaviour. I have tricked my brain into thinking I’ve had sex with a million women. And now my brain is telling me “why have sex this real girl, when we can have sex with 100 girls all at the same time on the internet”.

    The reason why porn is pleasurable is because your brain is rewarding you for spreading your genes. You are trying to impregnate a bunch of pixels. Your brain can’t tell the difference between real women and pixels on a screen, because we didn’t evolve as apes with the internet.

    Porn over the last few years has become much, MUCH more powerful, invasive, and addicting.

  120. I have been having a decent run porn free by having sex and not trying to count days. Right now i was thinking how it would be enjoyable to go watch some. I know its just a pleasure so to have some self control is helping. I have started this porn reduction about 8 months ago. Within that time and with sexual partners im learning to appreciate the body and feelings. I can be selfish sometimes and try to be like a pornstar, fucking hard and what not but i see most girls don’t like that. Its nice being able to be intimate and not all self conscious about how am i performing? Is my dick big enough? Does she like kinky stuff? Stuff im only concerned about because of porn. Funny really. I’m writing this mainly for me to look back on. More of journal entry really.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/pornfree/comments/9oabha/sex_helps/

  121. A long read, but I encourage you to take some time to read about what porn is doing to YOUR BRAIN.

    The youngest average age that porn is being viewed at is 10 years old. Imagine being a virgin, and learning all about sex from porn, creating false fantasies of what it’s gonna be like. Porn is a powerful teacher, and causes a mental shift that makes consumers more accepting of and more willing to try out what extreme acts they see. Here are 6 ways that porn is changing the way you think about sex.

    1. Sex is just about having an orgasm.

    Not true, sex is about relationships as well as physical, mental, and social well-being. Humans are wired for connection. Not just any connection. Connection with other people. And our sexual natures are a part of that. Our brains are programmed to get the most satisfaction from the relational bonding that communication, relationships, and love provide. Porn leaves consumers lonely and dissatisfied, but love can help them thrive. Don’t settle for synthetic digital sex.

    1. Attraction is about physical appearance, and that’s it.

    How shallow and hurtful would it be if someone only wanted to be with you because they thought you looked good and that was it? There are plenty of different qualities people can look for in a partner, including if they’re friendly,honest,kind,understanding, social, etc. porn teaches consumers that other people’s bodies are more important than their thoughts, feelings,emotions, and beliefs. Love and true attraction say otherwise.

    1. Behaviors don’t have consequences.

    Think about it this way: why is it that the most popular porn genres are some of the most disturbing acts in real life? It’s easy to see when you think about it in terms of what would happen next if you did that to someone you really cared about, or how it would make them feel. Porn doesn’t show people being prosecuted for serious crimes like rape, or sexual assault, or the physical injuries that porn stars live with because of what they do on set.

    1. Every sexual experience is totally satisfying. Sex in real life isn’t always flawless and perfect for those involved. And that’s okay as long as there’s full consent, communication, and intimacy involved. Many sexual experiences do feel good, but there are also a lot of ways to hurt your partner physically or emotionally.
    2. People are replaceable, disposable, and expendable.

    Porn isn’t about the humanity of the people on screen, it’s about their exaggerated performance. Love is about having a partner who cares for you as you are, as an irreplaceable and unique part of their life, your personality and traits are what they love. Porn doesn’t show any of that. It removes the humanity from people and presents them to be like objects to be used.

    1. “No” can turn into “yes”

    Only in the world of porn is a lack of consent considered “sexy.” Porn sells the idea that abuse can be sexy, and consent is merely optional in a sexual encounter. Today’s porn sells the idea that your pleasure is more important than anyone else’s pain or abuse.

    Those are just A FEW OF THE REASONS that porn is shallow, unrealistic, unhealthy, and changing your view of sex. If you care about what happens to your Brain, and the way you treat your partner, you’ll cut the porn and wire yourself to be normal again. CUT THE PORN AND MASTURBATION FOR GOOD.

    6 Messed Up Ideas About Sex That Porn Normalizes

  122. Make no mistake about it porn has gotten worse over time

    The other day I came across a piece of 80s porn on a general movie torrent site (much to my surprise)

    I downloaded it and started watching it to realize that not only there was actual a (admitedly thin) plot to it but that also back in the day a cheeky and sensual blowjob under a table was considered hot enough.

    Then yesterday I came across (ok fine I admit I was half-assedly looking for it) a clip from current porn, it was a “blowjob”… not only there was not plot, it was straight in your face (pun intended) stuff. Any sense of sensuality and context was gone…

    Now you have guys (and girls, remember the girl with the colostomy bag because she wanted to reenact an anal gangbang?) are copying recent porn as “sex education”…

    As a 39 year old, I can tell you my real sex life has so far been closer to events in the 80s porn than in the modern porn.
    Porn nowadays is pure shock value; it is like hollywood blockbusters, all bang, no substance.

    Something to keep in mind.

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