My Path to Pornography Addiction
I know pornography addiction is real because I was addicted to pornography most of my life and it has greatly affected my life in many negative ways.
When I was around 12 years old (before there was internet and social media) I was exposed to pornography through a friend who's parents had a secret stash of adult magazines and videos hidden away in their closet. One day when I was at this friend's house and his parents were gone, he told me about these magazines and asked if I wanted to look at any of them.
As a young boy who grew up in a religious family, I knew it would be very wrong to go along and look at them, but of course there was that curiosity since I had never fathomed seeing an adult magazine before, so I went along with it and we looked at the magazines. And these weren't magazines with photos of just nude women. These were magazine's which had pretty explicit sexual content. As a 12 year old boy who had never seen anything like this, I was blown away at what I was looking at and I couldn't deny that it was exciting to see.
I was a pretty normal kid who spent most of my free time outside playing with my friends and doing normal kid stuff. The friend who showed me those magazines lived just up the street and I would say he was considered my best friend at the time. I was at his house a lot which presented more opportunities to look at those magazines every once in awhile. I just accepted that it was ok, even though I knew it was wrong. One day my friend told me I could take a magazine home for myself if I want, saying his parents probably won't notice it's gone since they had a pretty big stack already. So I accepted and later walked home through the neighborhood with the magazine hidden under my jacket. I got home and quickly found some creative places to hide it in my room. Little did I understand at such a young age, that the seeds of addiction were planted and that this would eventually change my life forever.
I kept the magazine hidden away at home for maybe 5-6 months while always knowing it was wrong to have it. The thing that prompted me to finally get rid of it was realizing an outside family member had found it under my mattress. They left a note warning me about the dangers of porn and that I should get rid of the magazine. It was a very thoughtful note and was written with care. They didn't write their name on the note, but I pretty much knew who it was. The fact an in-law found it scared the heck out of me, to know someone knew I had this dirty magazine hidden away. I was maybe 13 years old at the time and I got rid of the magazine pretty quickly after that.
From that point, it was all about staying up late at night when I could and sneaking in dirty movies that showed a lot of nudity and sex in them on the pay-cable channels.
MY TEENAGE YEARS AND HIGH SCHOOL
As I got into my teenage years, my life was pretty normal for the most part. As far as my parents, my father worked a job out of town through the week and was only home on the weekends. My mom took care of me and other siblings through the week while she also worked a full time job. She had her share of anger issues and she could become very cold and mean, almost to the point of being mentally abusive at times. But I always felt loved by her for the most part. My dad was a very kind and loving father and I wish his influence was a part of my life more, but it was my understanding he had to be away a lot for work so I just accepted it.
I was an introvert and was a pretty quiet kid for the most part, except for when I was around my buddies. I had a lot of eccentricities about myself, and they really started showing more as I got into my mid-teen years. I was very much into art, music and style. I wasn't one of the popular kids in school, but I was still respected for my art capabilities and my love for music. My art got a lot of attention in high school and I also got into playing music in bands, which had me and my friends playing high school talent shows and high school parties. I was never into drinking, smoking or doing drugs, even though I was surrounded by friends who did those things. Nonetheless I always really liked people and always had a friendly demeanor about myself and got along pretty well amongst my high school peers.
GIRLS IN HIGH SCHOOL
All through my teenage years, even though I seemed to do ok in attracting girls, I was always very shy around them, due to my insecurities. If I was attracted to a girl, it was very hard for me to talk to them. I've always been respectful with girls and was never the aggressive type with them at all. Despite my underlying porn problem, I was never one to search out girls for the purpose of sex, although I had many opportunities. I've always had a respect for girls growing up and I never had any interest in using girls just for sex or treating a girl as just a sex object. For me, sexual relations with a woman is a much more intimate experience and I never associated sex with pornography. They've always been two completely different things to me. For this reason, sex was never something I pursued through high school, which was mainly due to my religious upbringing as I always had the belief that I shouldn't have sexual relations until I got married. I had girlfriends through high school who wanted to have sex, but I was so naive about it and just never thought of it as an option. It wasn't until my senior year in high school that I really fell in love with a girl and ended up having an intimate relationship.