Porn is ruining my life completely
I am 21m. I think I should just start from the beginning of everything. I’ve always had a bad relationship with sex. I was raped when I was 6, and it kept going for a couple years. I was exposed to porn very shortly afterwards and have used it since then. I got onto Twitter‘s nsfw side when I was 16. I did unfortunately message with people at that age which I think made everything worse. I knew it wasn’t right, and I kept going because it made me feel good about myself and I craved attention. I think that set everything up to make my porn addiction worse than it already was. I don’t think I understood or realized that at the time though, I didnt know how this could have a bad long term affect on me. Flash forward to college where I was 18, I had a very traumatic living experience there. To keep it short im not going to go into detail about it, but it was some of the worst months of my life. The only way I coped through it was porn basically. During that time I started watching stranger stuff I didn't used to be into. I could tell that I was getting into some kinda weird shit, but I didn’t care because it was the only thing that numbed me to everything going on. It’s gross to say but I genuinely think porn was the only thing that kept me going during that part of my life. I quit college after that semester and I met an online friend through twitter. he seemed to be just like me, same interests, and the same age. We shared porn together but for the most part it wasn’t something super weird. There was the occasional talk about weird kinks but it didn’t always get there and honestly we had a bigger relationship than just guys that send each other porn. He became my best friend and I still have never had an online friend actually be apart of my daily life besides for him. I truly did feel normal because of him and a full year went by before anything bad ended up happening. One night he ended up showing me some pretty extreme messed up porn out of nowhere. I was surprised and put off by it but ultimately gave in and let him go on about it. He showed me videos that I wish I never saw and I let it slide. I couldnt just end it there because I liked our friendship so much. He was the only person that I felt understood me. Again I knew it was bad but I let it keep going because I got something out of it, and it feels horrible to even say that. over the next few months I normalized the shit he was talking about way too much. He started getting weirder and weirder and showed me that extreme stuff a couple more times before I had to put an end to it. I told him he had to stop and I didn’t want him to look at that shit anymore. He did stop talking about it to me but I caught him and found a separate twitter page he made dedicated to it. The page was horrible. He said some stuff on that page that made my heart sink and realize he really was that far gone. I don’t want to go into detail of what it is as I find talking about it directly makes me too upset and in a way, gives it power over me. Just know it’s NOT that cheese pizza shit but it is taboo. I texted him a large paragraph about how awful of a person he was and blocked him. I couldn’t stop though. I saw too much and I’d eventually go back and see some of that horrible stuff he showed me. most the time it was only once every 2-3 months. I still don’t fully understand why but its been a problem. I feel like I’m trapped in a shame loop. I feel horrible about viewing it, and then I feel fine for a week, and then I ruminate about the whole situation, and then for some reason I go back and watch it again. It feels like when I watch it everything goes away for a few minutes. I don’t feel horrible anymore in that short moment. its almost like a high but It makes me feel like a monster afterwards. it’s the most debilitating experience ever, and it’s seriously affected my life. I eventually got out of the loop for over half a year. I thought I was finally out of it for good until I met another person online. i thought I was healed and that I had nothing to worry about as my porn usage was much less problematic. Still it was not a good idea to make another friend on an nsfw site again, I know. It started the same as the last. He seemed relatively normal and we played video games all the time together for a couple months. He then randomly dropped the fact that he was into the same fucked up stuff as the last guy I was friends with because some Grindr hookup did some of that shit in front of him. I did not want to meet another person like this. I genuinely couldn’t believe I was back in a similar situation like this. He tried to show me some of that extreme shit to me, and thankfully I ended it quickly after that. Even after all that, with a lot of shame ,I relapsed and got back into that loop. It’s been close to 3 and a half months since I’ve seen anything really bad but I feel like I’m going through withdrawals and I feel absolutely insane for even typing that. It really has spiraled out of control. I fear for my future because of this. I’ve been on some bad sites and I’ve seen things people should probably never see. I’m scared I’ll get in trouble somehow. I feel so ashamed. I feel absolutely horrible about myself and the anxiety is rampant. The paranoia is eating at me and I genuinely don’t know how to cope with it. My only way before was going back to porn which is clearly not the answer. When I got out of the loop back then I never felt as bad as I do now and I don’t know why. almost everyday is a struggle now and I feel so disgusting. I feel like I don’t deserve to be around others anymore. I feel unfixable and like I can’t live a normal life anymore. I’ve thought about taking my life constantly and sometimes I feel like that’s the only way to make sure it’ll stop and pay for it. I know the things I’ve seen I’d never do. I havent even had regular consensual sex with anyone in my entire life, the only time something sexual happened was when I was raped. I‘ve thought about getting therapy but I feel so scared about the entire situation idk if I could even talk about it. All I know is that I just had to get it off my chest and tell it somewhere. I really do want to get better and live a normal life but I feel so alone and like a freak.