So I'm Evian and I'm 16 years old. I have pretty much watched porn ever since I discovered it when I was 10. I knew I was gay then because I felt something with men that I don't with women. But I need help. As you can imagine, watching it since I was 10 has taken a HUGE toll on my life. I have friends and a very awesome family, but I can always tell that I've been the more socially awkward one in my group. I've been doing some research lately and I've heard that porn can do things like this to you and all of the other side effects too. After reading stuff like this, I really want to completely take porn out of my life. I've made numerous attempts, but the farthest I've gotten is only 1 week. After a couple days of trying I just a urge that is so strong and I literally feel like I have no control of my body. What can I do to help control my urges so I can get it out of my life? :tears:
Hi, Evian. First, unless you're watching porn hours and hours a day and avoiding social contact with others, it's unlikely that porn is the culprit for your social awkwardness. More likely that's just a byproduct of growing up gay and being a little shy. So that might be a separate (and very solvable) issue to talk about. But on to the porn: To get a little bit graphic, when you are talking about the strong urges, are these urges to masturbate, or to watch porn? It wouldn't be uncommon for someone in their teens to want to masturbate a lot, and I'm going to infer that you probably masturbate mostly or exclusively to porn. So, if that's the case, I think the first issue is separating your masturbation practice from your watching of porn. If you've always masturbated watching porn, it may be hard at first to separate the two, and you may find that masturbating without porn is boring or difficult. The key is in developing your natural fantasies. Try to think not about porn you've watched, but about situations you can imagine yourself in. Also, one of the steps that can help with process addictions (such as watching porn) is setting goals. If you've been able to go a week without watching porn, that's great. Try going another week without porn, and then maybe stretch it to 9 or 10 days, and then to 12 days. Think in advance of other things you could do instead of watching porn. Masturbating is obvious, but you could also try watching funny videos on Youtube that will make you laugh, or some strenuous exercise. Both will help get the same "happy hormones" flowing through your body and help to decrease the urge. Please keep posting on this topic and let us know how it's going. I know it probably feels a little uncomfortable or shameful to talk about, but the best antidote to those feelings are talking about it and realizing you aren't the only one that's had those feelings. We're here to help.
Man your going through a lot worse than me I also have porn addiction and trying to stop I'm thinking of getting a porn blocker for my laptop because it's gotten really bad for me I went from watching once in a blue moon to almost everyday . I think maybe it's best to get a porn blocker but it's gonna be hard and your gonna wanna watch but you have to ignore it and even if you do fall of the wagon don't beat yourself up over it keep trying til you get better .
If you're wanting to dramatically cut down how much you watch porn, then listen to Chip. My advice takes a different angle - You're a 16-year old male. Your sex drive is raging, and it'll keep raging for at least a few more years. Watching porn daily isn't unhealthy; I doubt it's had really any effect on your social interactions. Watching porn becomes unhealthy when you skip hanging out with people to watch porn, start skipping out on other responsibilities to watch porn, or when you literally start watching porn for hours and hours on end. If you watch porn and masturbate once a day, or even twice a day, that's 100% normal and it probably keeps you in a good mood. My advice is that you shouldn't try to cut porn out of your life completely. If you're really worried that you don't have a grip on it, try policing yourself down to watching porn maybe every two or three days, so that you know you're not completely dependent on it. Keep on masturbating daily, but use other things besides porn to help you do it - fantasies, objects, etc. In addition to that, exercise daily. Don't take porn completely out of your life. Watch porn less, masturbate frequently, and exercise.
Are you sure you have not visited and got this "information" off some religous organisation? Watching porn for 15 minutes a day is quite avrage I would say,
Hey evian, Porn and masturbation can be addictive. It's up to you to decide if it's the reason behind your troubles. For me, I knew it was because I was always a happy-go-lucky kid and there was no other reason for a sudden burst of self-loathing, lack of confidence, and depression. It could be teenage hormones, but I also told myself that for years until I realized I hadn't had a relationship in 7 years (I'm 20 now). If you want to go in-depth about the effects it *can* have on your brain, go to yourbrainonporn.com. It gets a little technical in some parts, but Gary does a good job of explaining it (in my opinion anyway, I'm a neuroscience student so most of it made sense from the get go). Cheers and best of luck.
