5 months clean and healed PIED

I've got a letter today from a young man who overcame a dysfunctional childhood and early porn addiction in order to get his life and sexual health back.

Anon's words are in italics. My comments and responses are in bold.

Hi, Noah, I'd like to tell you my story with pornography because it might be a little different from the ones I've seen on your channel so far.

I grew up in a very dysfunctional family. My dad, to this day, has an undiagnosed mental illness and I lived with him until my coming of age. As you can guess, my childhood was quite complicated.

The fact is, he knew since I was little about my homosexuality (maybe even before I started questioning myself). He was never explicitly homophobic to me, but he'd do subtle things here and there to try and 'correct' me, and one of them was introducing me to porn.

When I was a kid, he'd leave adult magazines around the house, exposing me to the photos of nude women on their covers. You might think this can be just coincidental or sloppy, but over time he'd do other things that would confirm his attempts to steer me in what he thought was the right direction.

During my early teens, my dad bought a computer and got an internet connection. The computer was not in the living room (as it happened to many other guys born in the 90s).

Instead, it was in his den, which meant more privacy.

When he was using the computer, he'd sometimes call me over and, as I entered the room, he'd show me a photo of a woman in her underwear. I'd just turn around and leave the room, which he found annoying. It also made me feel guilty and ashamed for not being turned on by women.

That...sounds uncomfortable. And manipulative. 

Other times, if he was using the computer and I wanted to use it after him, he'd leave about a dozen browser windows open (there were no tabs yet) with photos of women in their underwear or even topless. I would just close everything to do other things, but all of this normalized the use of pornography in my head. I learned that it's fine and common to consume that kind of material.

And another fatherly lesson backfires.

Around those years, I also started figuring out I was gay but sexuality was a taboo at home and many kids at school were homophobes. Some of them had been insulting me for a couple of years, even before my sexual awakening, which added to the shame and the guilt.

We can only do our own small part to evolve culture, but we have much more power in our own families. I hope that, like me, many others who grew up in families that didn't know how to talk about sexuality will do better with that as we have our own kids.

So what was the perfect outlet to satisfy my curiosity and to calm my need to experiment with boys of my age? Yep, it was porn, but not the kind my father wanted me to watch. I started masturbating to gay porn at 13 and all throughout my teenage years whenever I'd find the time and privacy to do so.

At 18, I went to college, left home and got my own laptop, which meant no limitations, so I started edging to porn for one, two or sometimes three hours.

It took me a while to start sleeping with other men. In my teenage years, my environment was definitely to blame for this, but once I got to college, pornography kept me in its lonely bubble and real life sex was very scarce.

One narrative I often hear is that porn can provide a safe way to explore one's sexuality as a youth—especially for LGBQ people. I won't dispute that this can happen. Porn probably has helped some young people clarify their sexual orientation and desires. But there are many 

Things kept getting worse over the next few years. I developed an anxiety disorder, due to my childhood and (today I can see it) also fueled by edging to porn. I also developed PIED but for some time I didn't even consider it could be related to my addiction.

I started therapy a couple of years ago and fortunately it has helped me realize how pornography messed up with my brain and my body.

On March this year, something clicked in my head. I realized porn no longer satisfied me. Whenever I finished, my mind started reeling and I suddenly felt very vulnerable, insecure and afraid. I had already tried to quit a couple of times these previous years, but it was only a matter of days before I relapsed. However, this time around, days passed and somehow I'd found the will to keep going. I also wrote down a list with pros and cons of masturbating with and without porn and the pros outnumber the cons by far (I'm not refraining from masturbation. I know it takes longer to reboot and sometimes I still struggle with porn fantasies but I think quitting pornography and edging is a huge achievement for now).

Hey congratulations on taking the reins back on your life man. As we age into our 20s, our brain is actually continuing to develop. I won't solely credit that with the changes that you're making, but it can help you reach that point where you can clearly see how empty the porn experience is.

I'm with you that pornfree masturbation can still be a healthy part of life, even for a recovering porn addict. Here's a video on that topic: 

Today, I've been porn-free for five months and counting, with zero relapses. My PIED is gone (I'd never performed this good in bed), I'm starting to see men as more than a penis attached to a body and to understand that sometimes I need more tenderness and affection from them than sexual interaction. Also, my anxiety has decreased and I expect it to go down further over time. After all, reversing 20 years of pornography consumption might take a while.

Your videos are helping me a great deal. I watch them at night, and they help me replace that leisure time after dinner that triggers my desire for PMO.

I know I'm not alone in this fight. Thank you so much for your content.

Take care,
Anon

Wow, great job and thank you for sharing your story of struggle and success!