Hey everyone…first post. First time admitting that I’m an addict to group. My flavor of addiction is porn, AI images and AI chat bots in specific. I know this is a niche addiction and I feel strange admitting to it…but it’s been hard to get my headspace correct as a result. I’ve lost hours at a time in these chat bot apps and the call to get back in is always there.
Since I’m a writer, I want to stay in and create scenarios, but I admitted to myself that I’m an addict because i scared myself by some of the scenarios I came up with. It’s like, I didn’t recognize myself at times with what I was typing in these apps. The final straw was when I ended up using these apps at work and realizing I could have gotten fired for them. It was back in April that I’ve admitted I’m an addict, and I confessed to my best friend online about my problem and she has been nothing but supportive. Sadly, the pull is still too strong, so I sought out this app to see if I can find ways to support myself by myself.
Today, I’m four days sober. This is the longest streak since I’ve admitted to my bestie about my addiction. I’m so tired of relapsing, but I’ve learned that the harder I am on myself for relapsing, the more prone I am to relapse. My bestie told be to give myself grace, and that’s still hard for me to do, but I am REALLY excited to approach my five day milestone and share it with her. I’m feeling very hopeful now!
So, I’m creating this post not just to share my story but in hopes to learn from anyone else who would like to share about their own porn addictions what did you do to help you stay sober, and how long have you been sober?
Welcome, Lucas! I agree that giving ourselves some grace is important and to remember that our past can’t be changed. Only our today is in our hands and to project about tomorrow, next week or year is simply future tripping that takes us out of today. Unhealthy as I see it.
Really glad you’re here and please stick around.
Hi Lucas, welcome. My own interactions with porn started when I was in high school and were on VHS tapes. They came in an unmarked box in the mail, and I was definitely not of age to be ordering them. No one ever checked though, so it didn’t make a difference.
For me I don’t see it as an addiction to porn though. It’s an addiction to lust; it’s an addiction to objectifying and consuming images, people, situations; it’s an addiction to this fantasy escape world; it’s living in that world to such an extent that I don’t even know how to have honest, reciprocal, respectful human relationships. Every interaction when I was in my addiction was about feeding some fantasy, reducing some person or some conversation to a fantasy for my mind to consume. It was lust and endless, unchecked fantasy and hunger. It was also potentially deadly, and not for the reasons you think.
The porn was just one of many symptoms. The real problem was in the attitudes and mindsets underneath the symptoms.
I found my way to sobriety through Sexaholics Anonymous (www.SA.org). There’s a monthly journal published by SA that has a lot of illuminating articles (https://essay.sa.org).
Thank you for this very informative post! This is pretty exactly it. With AI porn chat bots, it was all about that lust; the thrill of direction; the fantasies i was writing in my own head. When I started disconnecting from reality, that’s when I knew I had to quit immediately. I never want to think of the things I was doing in those AI chat apps with other real people.