My story- Pornography is ruining the brains of young Men and Women

Welcome @Bejing3333 :wave: My name is Matt and I am recovering from an addiction to lust which for me, on the surface, showed up as masturbation and porn-watching. As I have worked on my sobriety and gained understanding and insight, I began to realize the addiction has its roots deeper than the surface behaviours.

It is a pernicious addiction because of how easy it is to rationalize it with ideas like “everyone has these urges”, “it’s only natural”, etc etc. The hell it is - losing days and weeks to porn binges and missing work isn’t natural at all.

There’s lots of stories here on Talking Sober - if you search “pornography”, “porn”, “PMO”, “sex addiction”, and related terms you will find many posts - and there are resources too: Neal posted a list here (Resources for our recovery - #64 by NealRecoveryCA).

For me my recovery journey started in 2019 when I first reached out for help. I searched “sex addiction [city name]” for my city and attended group sessions at a sex addiction clinic here. In 2023 I joined a Sexaholics Anonymous group (www.SA.org). Participation in that group and specifically following the daily sobriety tasks my sponsor assigned me have had a transformative effect on me internally, and the ongoing recovery work I’m doing has removed the desire to “act out”. It is a freedom I never knew before.

Welcome to Talking Sober! :wave:

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