Porn Addiction, Erectile Dysfunction...Why Can't I Perform!!
Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 11:48 pmI had started to notice the problem over the past few years. I would rely more and more on hardcore porn than I had before. I didn’t think it was an issue, I thought my tastes were expanding, like I was becoming more open-minded.
I started using porn when I was young, discovering that part of my life quite suddenly. My journey was typical: as the evolution of the internet continued, I continued to watch the next best thing available. Pictures, clips, short videos, long videos, and ever onward. Looking back, I almost knew I had an obsession, but at the same time always just thought I was crazy for thinking that. Normal people do this all the time; it was just my religious conscious I was brought up on talking (I would later renounce that, but I still felt bad).
As I have been taking this journey towards self improvement a lot more seriously recently, as well as the randoms I would pick up over the years, I have gotten girls back to my apartment and gotten to end game. I suddenly found I couldn’t perform, I couldn’t get an erection. “Oh, it’s just the alcohol”, I would tell them and myself. It wasn’t until after a third time (twice with the same girl) that I finally decided, hey, maybe I’ll try to cut back on alcohol and porn and let my body reset a bit, to see if that helps.
I didn’t think of it as a big deal, and thought maybe a couple weeks dry would be good. I started a body fat loss challenge with some fellow forum members and coupled that with a 30 day no drink challenge, thinking alcohol to really be more of a culprit than anything and decided to give it a try (I have often wondered if I have an alcohol addiction). The no porn challenge started on 2/7 (as earliest as I can remember, it may have actually been the weekend before), and the no drink challenge started 2/10. It has been two weeks approximately for both. I feel better when I take time off drinking; I have done this before. I assumed that this was easily going to fix my issue.
I continued to not see improvement in my self-performance and thought, “Man…maybe this will take a bit longer than I thought”. However, all this time I have been plagued with a bad feeling and that something is really wrong. I just couldn’t figure it out.
Let me back up again to give you more of a background of my psychology. I have a history of depression and anxiety in my family, as well as noticing severe OCD tendencies in my father and now realize in myself. The typical Type A personality. All of these issues twist together in a psychological cocktail to sometimes make my life miserable.
Fast forward again to today, I have just been feeling like something is really wrong with me but I couldn’t find anything related to my performance issues that really clicked. I read general erectile dysfunction information, but none of it really seemed to matter. How could a twenty something healthy guy have an issue with ED? I tried to connect alcohol and performance, but still didn’t find anything that clicked. I continued to be a little morose about it all, and it caused ever more anxiety.
Finally, last night I came back from hanging out with a girl (same one I had 2 performance related issues with), and was kind of in a crappy mood. I was stone cold sober, hoping this was the key, and wanted to close the deal, but I was feeling surprisingly not up for the task. My game skills weren’t really tested, and I didn’t try to close. I just really didn’t feel into it from a sexual perspective (..what??). My mind was saying, “Go for it! You need to learn to push this frame!”, but it felt very incongruent. I came home feeling blah.
It somewhat clicked in my head that there could be another issue, with another challenge I was doing. It didn’t seem as plausible to me, but I thought I’d check it out. I whipped out the ol’ Google website and typed in “porn and erectile dysfunction”. A couple articles popped up that I looked at, they were junk (at the top of the list too, hmph).
Then, I looked a few links down: “www.yourbrainonporn.com” (henceforth YBOP). “Hmm, this one looks interesting”, I thought. Since my self-improvement journey started around 2006-7, I have been much more open minded to information that does not come directly out of mainstream. Mainstream information is not always correct or congruent with issues I have, and there are plenty of “underground” type issues that groups of people slowly gather around that say, “Hey, THAT’S my problem!”, and a great information site starts out of it.
And so, this seems like it’s the one for me. YBOP starts to describe all of the issues I have related to performance / ED. In particular, it described my lust for stronger and stronger forms of porn. It described things that really clicked about not being able to maintain erections without that stimulus, and having it affect interactions with real people (even if I find them appealing). I definitely have gotten to a very extreme version that I am not particularly proud of, but something had to do the job.
The problem with all of it was that, to me, I didn’t have “that big of an issue”. It has seemed as though it was something harmless this whole time, and that I could quit whenever. It wasn’t hurting anyone, I wasn’t losing productivity as far as I knew and my job was going great. I don’t believe that anymore. I believe that what has happened is the slow increase in use has been a long journey that has built up into a big issue I didn’t recognize. So I started my own little recovery journey without knowing about this issue about two weeks ago, and now I am extra motivated to follow through.
After 2 weeks, I feel like I am in a mood and libido downswing, without a lot of motivation and drive. While that feeling sucks, I see this as a great thing after reading success stories, because this is a typical recovery path. I am going to continue to ride this out and see what happens after I “reboot”, as they call it on the site. The typical journey is 6-12 weeks, so this will be a long haul.
I definitely am a little enlightened overall about myself and my psychology. I don’t think what I have is very common, and if it is maybe I have a worse version of it. That’s why most of you reading this probably don’t have any issue pounding out a few in a row, still going out and getting the job done later. I function pretty normally and can be a normal guy, but these small little roadbumps have always been difficult for me, sometimes without me knowing it. I see my OCD’s and addictions with a new clarity that is pretty refreshing (for instance, my sugar intake can be horrible at times). My new goal is to try to tailor them to things that are positive influences on my life (self-improvement, working out, etc.).
While my journey is still young, I may discover ever more, but for now I wanted to share my findings from last night for anyone with my type of issue. May it help guide you towards a happier life. Check out the website for more information.
(Note: I have no monetary interest in the link I posted, it is merely a self-help website for anyone struggling with the issue of porn addiction. If I can’t keep the link, please search for Your Brain on Porn on the internet).
I started using porn when I was young, discovering that part of my life quite suddenly. My journey was typical: as the evolution of the internet continued, I continued to watch the next best thing available. Pictures, clips, short videos, long videos, and ever onward. Looking back, I almost knew I had an obsession, but at the same time always just thought I was crazy for thinking that. Normal people do this all the time; it was just my religious conscious I was brought up on talking (I would later renounce that, but I still felt bad).
As I have been taking this journey towards self improvement a lot more seriously recently, as well as the randoms I would pick up over the years, I have gotten girls back to my apartment and gotten to end game. I suddenly found I couldn’t perform, I couldn’t get an erection. “Oh, it’s just the alcohol”, I would tell them and myself. It wasn’t until after a third time (twice with the same girl) that I finally decided, hey, maybe I’ll try to cut back on alcohol and porn and let my body reset a bit, to see if that helps.
I didn’t think of it as a big deal, and thought maybe a couple weeks dry would be good. I started a body fat loss challenge with some fellow forum members and coupled that with a 30 day no drink challenge, thinking alcohol to really be more of a culprit than anything and decided to give it a try (I have often wondered if I have an alcohol addiction). The no porn challenge started on 2/7 (as earliest as I can remember, it may have actually been the weekend before), and the no drink challenge started 2/10. It has been two weeks approximately for both. I feel better when I take time off drinking; I have done this before. I assumed that this was easily going to fix my issue.
I continued to not see improvement in my self-performance and thought, “Man…maybe this will take a bit longer than I thought”. However, all this time I have been plagued with a bad feeling and that something is really wrong. I just couldn’t figure it out.
Let me back up again to give you more of a background of my psychology. I have a history of depression and anxiety in my family, as well as noticing severe OCD tendencies in my father and now realize in myself. The typical Type A personality. All of these issues twist together in a psychological cocktail to sometimes make my life miserable.
Fast forward again to today, I have just been feeling like something is really wrong with me but I couldn’t find anything related to my performance issues that really clicked. I read general erectile dysfunction information, but none of it really seemed to matter. How could a twenty something healthy guy have an issue with ED? I tried to connect alcohol and performance, but still didn’t find anything that clicked. I continued to be a little morose about it all, and it caused ever more anxiety.
Finally, last night I came back from hanging out with a girl (same one I had 2 performance related issues with), and was kind of in a crappy mood. I was stone cold sober, hoping this was the key, and wanted to close the deal, but I was feeling surprisingly not up for the task. My game skills weren’t really tested, and I didn’t try to close. I just really didn’t feel into it from a sexual perspective (..what??). My mind was saying, “Go for it! You need to learn to push this frame!”, but it felt very incongruent. I came home feeling blah.
It somewhat clicked in my head that there could be another issue, with another challenge I was doing. It didn’t seem as plausible to me, but I thought I’d check it out. I whipped out the ol’ Google website and typed in “porn and erectile dysfunction”. A couple articles popped up that I looked at, they were junk (at the top of the list too, hmph).
Then, I looked a few links down: “www.yourbrainonporn.com” (henceforth YBOP). “Hmm, this one looks interesting”, I thought. Since my self-improvement journey started around 2006-7, I have been much more open minded to information that does not come directly out of mainstream. Mainstream information is not always correct or congruent with issues I have, and there are plenty of “underground” type issues that groups of people slowly gather around that say, “Hey, THAT’S my problem!”, and a great information site starts out of it.
And so, this seems like it’s the one for me. YBOP starts to describe all of the issues I have related to performance / ED. In particular, it described my lust for stronger and stronger forms of porn. It described things that really clicked about not being able to maintain erections without that stimulus, and having it affect interactions with real people (even if I find them appealing). I definitely have gotten to a very extreme version that I am not particularly proud of, but something had to do the job.
The problem with all of it was that, to me, I didn’t have “that big of an issue”. It has seemed as though it was something harmless this whole time, and that I could quit whenever. It wasn’t hurting anyone, I wasn’t losing productivity as far as I knew and my job was going great. I don’t believe that anymore. I believe that what has happened is the slow increase in use has been a long journey that has built up into a big issue I didn’t recognize. So I started my own little recovery journey without knowing about this issue about two weeks ago, and now I am extra motivated to follow through.
After 2 weeks, I feel like I am in a mood and libido downswing, without a lot of motivation and drive. While that feeling sucks, I see this as a great thing after reading success stories, because this is a typical recovery path. I am going to continue to ride this out and see what happens after I “reboot”, as they call it on the site. The typical journey is 6-12 weeks, so this will be a long haul.
I definitely am a little enlightened overall about myself and my psychology. I don’t think what I have is very common, and if it is maybe I have a worse version of it. That’s why most of you reading this probably don’t have any issue pounding out a few in a row, still going out and getting the job done later. I function pretty normally and can be a normal guy, but these small little roadbumps have always been difficult for me, sometimes without me knowing it. I see my OCD’s and addictions with a new clarity that is pretty refreshing (for instance, my sugar intake can be horrible at times). My new goal is to try to tailor them to things that are positive influences on my life (self-improvement, working out, etc.).
While my journey is still young, I may discover ever more, but for now I wanted to share my findings from last night for anyone with my type of issue. May it help guide you towards a happier life. Check out the website for more information.
(Note: I have no monetary interest in the link I posted, it is merely a self-help website for anyone struggling with the issue of porn addiction. If I can’t keep the link, please search for Your Brain on Porn on the internet).