So I am going through with getting clean of pornography since I’m only 18 and a girl it started to make me not good mentely but I really want to know if when you stop porn and masturbation do you get withdrawal symptoms? Its been three days since I’ve done it and I do feel a bit more angry and tired though.
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Hi, welcome to the forum. I’m not a medical professional, so the things I tell you should be regarded as peer support.
I experienced cravings and irritability after quitting porn and masturbation. I don’t know if you can call it withdrawal symptoms but it wasn’t easy, that’s for sure.
An addiction is a coping mechanism gone wrong, among many things. There were things in our life that we couldn’t manage and we developed a way to cope that became an addiction. When you stop active addiction, the things you were trying to manage, finally surface and THAT can make you feel uncomfortable. I usually recommend seeking some kind of personal help or a recovery programme when that happens. If you’ve been addicted to porn and/or masturbation, (or to anything else), you should take the time to understand why that has happened.
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Congrats on your three days!
As Oliva said, most of us here aren’t qualified to say but we can speak about our own experiences. Personally I believe yes you can experience withdrawal symptoms although the “withdrawal” classification of the symptoms gets technical from what I have read.
Since I have quit I have experienced periods of strong withdrawal like symptoms, and periods in between where I felt great.
My symptoms were/are big increases in anxiety, depression and paranoia, things I had never really had much experience with. I get intrusive thoughts that I can’t stop my mind from ruminating on, which often then spirals to depressive feelings or spikes in anxiety. I even had periods of suicidal ideation, although never actual thoughts of acting on it. All of these feelings could be attributed to the removal of the coping mechanism I was using to push all my feelings away, but in my mind that is what an addiction is.
Physically I got back pain, didn’t want to eat, felt physically sick a lot of the time and was just tired non stop. I have lost about 8-9 kgs in the past 4 months, most of that occuring in two three week periods when my symptoms were at their worst.
The one thing I didn’t really feel was strong urges to use porn, however I think that is because I was so mentally down and for the first time I knew porn would just take it worse. I did get some urges if I was in a situation where use would normally be triggered, like working late or overwhelmed. However I managed that by mostly avoiding the situations, or being honest with my wife it happened and removing myself from that activity.
If you have felt any of this, you aren’t alone and it does get easier. It’s fucking hard but worth it. I still get these symptoms but each wave has been easier to manage which gives me faith I can keep doing it.
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Well I have been addicted to it for six years and I’ve tried to stop so many times but now I have this support around me that finally helped me to stop and you saying that thing about why we have addictions is t o like cover up things I think it was just my emotions, I hated to express them so I took it out on pornography and feeling good thank you for the insight!
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Well the reason I started it was to feel good when I felt no one wanted me when I was younger I and started when I was 12 and it went downhill I feel this is a safe place but I liked to watch stuff like master and slave I kiris to watch people so something they didn’t want to I don’t know why but it gave me that “thrill” I even started to sexualized my cousins husband or anyone even I would image married coupls having sex and I’d day dream.about someone doing it to me.it was bad. Most of my triggers are on YouTube how do you think I should go about getting out of the situation to stop thinking about it? I know we are all.unqualified to speak on this but may you give me some tips.that you did when the feeling of that dread and stuff come on? Because I get dark periods too where I don’t want to.do anything but eat eat and stay scrolling I want to be from everyone and that’s a problem I would love your input on this as well
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Firstly, try not to be too hard on yourself for what you were interested in and watching. There could be a number of reasons that was doing it for you, maybe you really do like it, maybe the thrill of something new and more extreme was what triggered your dopamine response. Ultimately you can explore that when you understand yourself better away from porn, but don’t think that it defines who you are now. In my view porn has a very unique way of twisting what we desire, something I am still trying to unravel for myself.
In terms of advice, I’ll keep it simple. Engage in hobbies away from spaces that have anything above a super low trigger risk. For me I tried to read a lot, getting into a book allows me to focus only on that. My psychologist said distractions are fine, particularly when you are in the early stages and don’t have the capacity to actually dig into your feelings as much.
Get off social media, delete the apps, delete accounts if you can. Log off or clear algorithms at the very least.
I wrote down my boundaries, and if I didn’t know if a behaviour was okay I asked someone elses opinion. My brain was and is really good at convincing me something was completely fine while an objective person would say absolutely not.
Well I just realized that me laying down on the ground was a trigger and I imediently started to get aroused because a dog was near I have a porn addiction to like face sitting and stuff and I fell back into it and now I feel horrible what do I do? I feel sick and disgusted with myself