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I'm twenty-seven and I feel I lost the best years of my life

I've never been kissed, I lost my friends to the screen, and my degree counted for nothing at interviews. Now I'm finally on a break from porn.

Hi, I’m Rahul and I’m twenty-seven. I started masturbating, I don’t know, maybe in fourth grade. In middle school it moved on to pictures at first, and then porn videos. Despite my age, I’m a virgin; I’ve never even kissed anyone. Because of my addiction I lost what some people call the best years of my life.

It wasn’t only the lack of experience with the opposite sex. Once I was online all the time, I also lost my friends. I preferred sitting at the computer watching porn to going out with my mates. I became a 100% no-lifer. As if that weren’t enough, I’m a very shy person, but that may come from the porn addiction; I hope quitting will help. I look like skin and bones, as people say, with no muscle at all, but that’s the result of sitting in front of a computer for years. I don’t know whether it’s related to masturbation, but I’m as hairy as a monkey. Sometimes I’m surprised they don’t lock me up when I go to the zoo.

My parents said: go to university and you’ll make something of yourself. What it gave me was an even worse porn addiction. At a job interview they told me the degree wasn’t important; what counted for them was work experience.

I’ve finally forced myself to write this. I’m on a break from porn now. The only thing I’ve noticed so far is that I have no appetite for life, but maybe that’s a withdrawal symptom.

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