Updates on Addiction

A few months ago, I wrote an essay about how I was trying to quit porn. I did my best to convey the personal impact it had on me as well as the goals I hoped to achieve. Compared to many, I am not “addicted,” but there was still continual relapsing motivated by morbid curiosity. My daily train of thought wasn’t altered greatly because of porn, but every now and then the curiosity would arise and I’d want to see it again. I felt that writing it out and placing it in a public forum would force me to take accountability. If I had documentation saying that I would quit, then it would be harder to shrug off.

So, how is it going? To be completely honest, not too well. Like most addicts, desire takes a long time to go away. It’s not drugs or alcohol that I must go out and buy. The internet is chock full of websites giving me access to what I want. I know what they are. You know what they are. No matter how often I set up the filter on my web browser, I have access to temporarily dismantling it. I thought removing Incognito Mode would add more shame to things, but there was the “Erase History” feature. I could scrub my computer of any evidence, and it was sweet. 

Whereas something tangible requires more to trigger, porn seems a lot more omnipresent even when it’s not. That’s just how society is built. It’s there in innuendos, suggestive clothing, societal expectations, and even the fact that we’ve sexualized the entire body. Initial attempts to quit porn resulted in me seeing people as beautiful and less erotic. There was less distraction of replacing the innocent with the smutty images glowing on a late-night computer screen. I noticed how attractive outfits were and the small things that make up our identities began to seem commendable. When you’re able to shift from seeing things as sexy to cute, it takes away certain insinuations. Sure, the overall impact of how I see the world shifted since my previous entry, but that isn’t to say this is where I stop. 

I can’t fully suggest that what follows is where the relapse occurred, but it’s hard not to see a piece in a larger puzzle. As I’ve put myself in more social situations, I have witnessed a variety of body types. While many are beautiful, there will be small things that trigger some form of gender envy. I was at a volleyball game and someone’s midriff was showing. The hips were magnificent. Not six-pack abs, just curvy. They drew me in. I attempted not to gawk. Still, those hips triggered something. I saw someone thinner which made me contemplate my insecurities around decades of obesity. Other parts were mundane, like wanting what you can’t have. It’s not so much the person, but the hips. It’s the way the person was received by their group and smiling during conversation. I have nobody I could laugh like that with. I am too old to comfortably walk up to people even in their late 20s and feel like we’d hit it off. 

I think that I may struggle with fantasies. There’s a lot of negative self-talk where I’m self-critical about how I failed to be something greater in life. I am in my Mid-30s and haven’t achieved much of anything (a façade, sure, but powerful even so). The only upside is that my mood swings have decreased over the past three years. Still, there is something infectious about people in a group being happy that shortcircuits my guilt. I consider that I won’t have a great friend group as I age. The fear of loneliness takes hold. It hasn’t crippled me yet, but I still worry.

I return to the midriff. It was only a few seconds, but it taunted me. Heart racing, fist clenching, there when I closed my eyes… obsession. If I can get ahold of a generic picture, maybe I can get it out of my head. I was forgoing any logic about the effort it would take to achieve this look. I work hard to lose weight and recognize the difficulty in myself, yet I don’t consider how much harder other people work on their presentations. I don’t have that stamina, those genes to make my body shaped that way. You know, the ones that everyone celebrates by saying “Damn I look good.” It feels like a club I’ll never belong to and that’s somehow a bad thing. Why is the body positivity talk not working? Why am I not able to see myself as “beautiful”?

Hell, I regret the desperation I fall into surrounding the thought of anorexia. I wonder if I would be recognized more. Having befriended people who have battled it seriously, I recognize it’s not to be taken lightly. I should be grateful my life hasn’t been severely altered by lifelong side effects caused by malnutrition. Even then, the thought of missing out on being skinny overwhelms me, wondering if my life would be better. I suppose I’m sane because of my awareness to not go through with it, but at the same time… WHY is that thought there and how can I get it to leave?

I think that porn as an outlet hasn’t always been solely for pleasure. I think it was a source for curiosity. Late at night when YouTube videos get boring, I find myself forgiving myself too leniently. I’ll turn off the blocker and pull it up. Early on I found loopholes in Bing images where modesty still resided. As you can guess, curiosity got the best of me. It’s how I am about everything. I need answers no matter how trivial. The world is too big to take something for granted.

On the one hand, hips are easy to see in beach-ready images. Those days I flirt with the idea that clothed people aren’t pornographic and find excuses. Still, it’s visual stimulation. I’m still finding the overwhelming sensations of hips not going away but demanding more out of me. My imagination wanders and soon I’m either getting the sensation out of the way or pushing myself to go further. On more conservative days, I’m proud of myself. On the other, it’s a downward spiral that has led to complicated corners.

I should pause and say something optimistic. As much as I’m writing this during a porn spiral, I’m not totally hopeless. While I’ve only been able to go a week at longest, overall my consumption has been down by a third. I am more self-consciously criticizing myself for slipping up. While I inconspicuously go about my life after, there’s still guilt that comes with breaking your own vows. It may have been some vanilla-looking sex, but that’s not the point. You watched people performing sex acts when you said you wouldn’t. That’s not what you’re supposed to do.

To be completely honest, I am muddled on whether this is an ultimate good. I am firmly in the camp of pro-sex workers. I believe that sex scenes in cinema can be used to progress stories. All in all, I support sex and desire to lose its stigma. Not so much in a public deviant way, but as self-expression in the privacy of one’s home with a partner’s consent. I know this complicates the concept of addiction as being bad, but sex is a natural part of life. We shouldn’t be ashamed of it. If anything, violence should be scoffed at more than it currently is.

Finding places online that discuss quitting porn without some sense of agenda is difficult. The most noteworthy is the “No Fap” community. They want to eliminate masturbation entirely with the intent of increasing productivity. Is me quitting porn related to some belief that it’ll improve how I think? Yes. However, No Fap has too many toxic masculinity stereotypes involved. I’m not doing it to be better in tune with “my partner.” I don’t believe that I’ll be hooking up with a single person because of this exercise. I don’t even want to quit masturbation. I just want to be dependent on myself for fantasies because I find otherwise I am just going to dive into morbid curiosity. The internet will bleed too much with reality and it won’t be long before correlation or distraction causes the mundane to seem unnecessarily erotic. This has been present in conversations where I have to second guess whether I’m accidentally quoting something inappropriate because it sounds harmless in my brain. 

The other is the religious route. I have been skeptical about trusting a website that says you can be “healed” of addiction. It feels like you’re two donations away from joining a church. I think of those miracle healers that smack your head and your concussion causes you to speak gibberish. More importantly, it simplifies the matter to a delusional level of marketing. My exercise isn’t about faith or moral purity. I just want to be seeing the world less through a pornographic lens. I notice when I’ve been without videos for a few days I tend to be less preoccupied over trivial things. Even then, I do think the jitters come out in other ways and I can’t wait for it to become manageable.

That, and I have felt less guilt from shifting masturbation into something internal. For starters, there is less lingering guilt after. I’m also able to take more creative license with where my mind goes. I shift fantasies and experiment in ways I couldn’t elsewhere. I think the most enlightening thing is that it’s really the first time I’ve been able to think this way without it being more observational than interactive. I’ve struggled to believe I deserve any centrality. Feeling wanted in my brain has oddly made me question other more platonic places where I should be more active and present.

Porn, a lot of times, has been an impersonal outlet. Much like other fields that are performance-heavy, I am curious most of the time. How does anyone convince themselves to be this vulnerable before a judgmental crowd? I can’t imagine filming yourself in pleasurable states at the risk of ridicule and social ostracization. How do you allow yourself to be shamelessly giddy and spontaneous so as to allow every little flaw to become part of the act? I am drawn in by how willing they are. It’s why sometimes I’m more allured less to the explicit acts and more to the conversations and behind the scenes footage where they’re discussing odd topics. Even scenes where clothed directors are instructing naked actors, I find weirdly erotic. It’s like there’s always someone at a disadvantage. It’s all so confusing because outside of the exterior tapestry, the fascination often has little to do with the actual sex. It’s more how I relate to any of them even knowing I’ll never know a single thing about them.

Because of morbid curiosity, I sometimes fought my guilt by doing what I always do… turn to psychology articles. When I was depressed in 2021, I spent almost every night researching an ailment I assumed I had. To me, there’s comfort in knowledge. It’s a coping mechanism I developed in youth and have relied upon whenever I feel doubt settling in.

I wondered what symbolism fetishes have. Why was I enjoying sex that wasn’t necessarily about sex? I feel connected to vulnerability, especially when a second person is dissonant from one’s heightened pleasure. Having one party being overwhelmingly front and center with their fantasies works for me, though not necessarily as a form of dominance. That’s why there was a recent period where I enjoyed watching Wood Rocket Q&A videos. They weren’t “sexy,” but breaking down craft was. Even actors doing heinous, physically demanding tasks were fascinating to listen to. The sacrifice they put on their bodies, especially when it involved injury, tapped into empathy. As one can guess, it proved to be triggering in the long run just because of the ideas it can give.

With all of that said, I do think the takeaway from research, while not well defined, explains part of it. Understanding psychology has removed some of the sting, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still addictive. I still have decades of exposure, as well as encouragement from others, that have become secondhand. I think what intrigues me may parallel my own insecurities. 

Because I was bullied in school, I was often secretive around others. This could also be the result of being autistic and already having some disconnect with even the nicest people in my social groups. I still find myself sometimes creating a false narrative, or playing a character, to entertain myself and confuse others. I want to believe that having someone doubt me and challenge who I am through interrogation will reveal some greater acceptance. I long for that game because it seems like a thrilling form of intimacy. Those who can express their vulnerabilities so candidly are the most attractive and inspire me to attempt an honest dialogue. The only downside is the occasional worry that doing this has caused me to lack a concrete identity in certain ways. 

*With all of this said, I have been moving toward a more truthful direction as I’ve gotten older, so please don’t take anything in this essay as misdirection.  

The struggle to share desires and not be shamed ultimately made the taboo more appealing. When I’m bored online, it’s got real “you are not alone” energy to it. Nobody is judging these people. They are themselves, celebrated by co-stars or comment sections. They aren’t self-conscious about how they look. They’re free to do whatever they want. It’s there in how their bodies behave, capturing something that cannot be faked. Oh, to destroy a self-conscious mind and a lifetime of body issues.

It’s where I’m less riddled with guilt for breaking my exercise. I’m often able to forgive myself and try to move on. Still, you know the adage that you can’t have just one. You’ll be back tomorrow for more, attempting to recapture the sensation and soon you’re doing it five days in a row. Sure, I’ve been more conservative about the number of times lately, but I turn to it and soon find myself wanting a little flavor. “Vanilla-looking sex” is passe. Let’s mix it up a little.

Unfortunately, that involves diving into the gross side of things. What’s bizarre is that I’m not detached enough to consider it erotic. I become curious why people are that debaucherous. The gross videos are an endurance test. I’m attempting to comprehend what attracts someone to this type of work. Without specifics, a lot of it involves the body expelling different orifices. I am not turned on by most of it, and yet I allowed myself to keep watching. I don’t like it anymore the second or third minute, but I watch almost as if I’m punishing myself. Is this a perverted form of that old “smoke a whole carton of cigarettes to become sick and lose interest” practice? I also wonder if it’s fetishizing an eating disorder. I’m not sure what convinced me to experience such discomfort in an activity that should be pleasurable. Maybe I need that level of guilt to tell me to stop.

This led to forums on eating disorders. It’s made me hyper-aware of the long-term impacts of bulimic behaviors. I’ve seen as much support for recovery as I have people who perform these acts in “safety-conscious” ways. Having the discourse be candid and vulgar allowed it to seem more counterproductive. Even then, you can’t erase something so heightened from your mind so immediately. For the next day, I recalled those disturbing images. I prayed for a cleaner mind. I don’t want to be “healed.” I just want to not be motivated to start by looking at someone’s hips and be overwhelmed enough to see people covered in who knows what. Most days I’m fine, but when it’s the once or twice this happens is where I realize the problem. I feel better the longer that I go without self-inflicted discomfort. It’s something I really should never get rid of.

But still, things have been caught in a cycle. Every three or four days, I find myself giving into curiosity. While sometimes I can stop at Bing images, there are times where I notice how easily I can type in something worse. I need to stop before I find new ways to damage my mind with things that I know I don’t like. 

There are times where I panic and try to find ways to go to the next level with internet protection. It’s not necessarily that easy, at least by yourself. While I have investigated apps, there are a handful that I’m hesitant to explore because I worry one person’s addiction is another’s easy profit. I don’t want to spend money on cures. I just want to find ways to be more abstinent and only rely on what actually excites me. I don’t feel like porn can achieve that for me, or so I believe now.

Maybe it’s a cop out to say, “So I believe now.” Some of my worst behavior has been less habitual and is a catalyst for trying to quit. Removing one stimulant just forces you to find another. That’s not an excuse to recede, but more why I think I’m going so extreme sometimes. I am asexual and it’s easy to assume certain things about me because of it. While I long for a relationship, I am less drawn to one sexually. I don’t see porn as a response to lacking sex in my life, though it may be tied to insecurity and loneliness. A lot of the appeal is visual and makes me admire bodies in potentially unproductive manners because of how they seem praised in a scene. I recognize that being asexual might explain the disconnect I sometimes feel in this context. Nobody’s ever called me attractive – at least not in the same way as the “pretty people” next to me, and I feed into that woe too much. Watching is as much fulfillment as it is curiosity about what being wanted feels like. I do sometimes wonder if I’m overblowing this situation while at the same time realizing that’s what an addict would say. At worst, I want to see if this exercise produces anything meaningful – and I think it has. It’s forced me to think about sexuality in much more psychological terms than I have. It’s given me stuff to work on. I would say that’s good enough for now.

Hopefully, I will return in a few months and have a better update to give. For now, I write this to provide accountability yet again. I think taking time to ask, “Why are you watching?” is a good start. It allowed me to have informative conversations with myself and go beyond my limits. Maybe one day I will find a balance that makes sense. For now, I’m treating this like an addiction and figuring it out. Maybe I just need to step away from my laptop for longer and put myself in activities that require me to think about other things. Even just leaving the computer as far away from my bed as possible may be for the best. On the bright side, I’m doing much better than I used to. I believe that I can be greater. Maybe soon it will all make sense, but for now, I continue to see where things take me. Fingers crossed.