My story began in an ordinary way. As a withdrawn twelve-year-old boy I started masturbating and watching porn. Ten years have passed since then, and I sometimes did it several times a day, especially when I was younger. I kept reaching for new genres of porn. I could neglect a lot of things just so that in the evening I could sit down, fire up another batch of videos, by then very hardcore porn, and jerk off. A session like that could last many hours.
I only cut down on porn when I went to university, but I still watched porn films every week or two. Two years ago I was hit by an anxiety disorder and took medication for half a year. It was an extremely hard period in my life. Somewhere around that time, after yet another session, I realised that even though I was watching porn and masturbating, my penis was barely reacting to stimulation. I typed a question into a search engine asking whether you can get addicted to pornography. That’s how I found articles about it and started my “fap detox”, which I’ve been doing for a year now.
The longest I lasted in that whole year was three weeks, and I really did see an improvement in my body language and more self-confidence. After those three weeks my penis also responded better to porn. But every time, I lost.
The situation changed at the end of the year, when I met a fantastic girl. What can I say, she’s simply my ideal. It was a good period in my life, and our meetings led to us becoming a couple. We haven’t made love yet; for now we’re waiting. But it dawned on me that when we do get intimate, I’ll simply fail. That scared me, and I started quitting once again, but this time it was different: I blocked porn sites on my computer and stopped masturbating completely. I’ve now gone a month without it, the longest I’ve ever lasted in my life, and I’m proud of myself. Once I almost slipped, but the thought of my girlfriend stopped me, thank goodness.
For two months I’ve had mild returns of my anxiety disorder, but they were only occasional and could have been related to stress. After three weeks without masturbating, a real disaster began: all the symptoms of my anxiety came back, and they are very strong, including struggling to catch my breath. On top of that I have enormous trouble concentrating. I can’t think rationally or even speak properly. There are headaches and dizziness too. I see the whole world as if through a fog, and almost everything makes me angry. For a week I’ve had incredible mood swings. I started wondering whether this is my anxiety disorder coming back or withdrawal symptoms; after ten years of doing it non-stop, they could be strong.
On the day I almost slipped, I opened a porn site for a minute or two and started masturbating. Luckily I came to my senses and deleted the browser I hadn’t blocked. I noticed that even after such a short time masturbating, my body functioned almost normally for a few hours: the mood swings and anxiety symptoms eased. Of course, after a short while they came back.
I’m afraid this is a relapse of my anxiety disorder and that because of my moods I’ll lose this girl. When we met, I was limiting masturbation and had completely recovered from the anxiety. I was self-confident, a bit arrogant, and I had a great sense of humour. Now, unfortunately, all of that is worse. I keep asking myself: is this my anxiety disorder coming back, or can withdrawal be so strong that I can barely function normally?
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