Letter to a Porn Addict
America’s culture had a uniquely brutal and alienating way of brainwashing its males from an early age into all kinds of damaging beliefs and superstitions about what being a so-called ‘real man’ was, such as competitiveness instead of concert, winning at all costs, dominating others through intelligence or will, being strong, not showing your true emotions, depending on others seeing you as a real man in order to reassure yourself of your manhood, seeing your own value solely in terms of accomplishments, being obsessed with your career or income. David Foster Wallace in Good Old Neon … and with ‘getting women’, i.e. your ability to leverage said accomplishments into manipulating many females to let you fuck them. Hard. The more accomplished you are the more ‘they let you do it’ with your throbbing, gigantic, manly cock. The Capitalist Manifesto, p247
Dearest pornography enjoyer,
I promise this will not be a puritan sermon about abstinence, the evils of premarital sex, impending hellfire, or the otherworldly powers of money-making, focus, and unrivaled intellect that could be yours if only you bought my No Nut November semen retention pdf guidebook for the absurdly low price of $139 $39.99 (special January Black Friday offer, BUY IT QUICK before it vanishes in 17 hours 46 minutes and 68 seconds, 67, 66, 65,).
Let us set the record straight from the get-go. Sex is great. It can be the most wonderful moment, take countless varied shapes and flavours. It can be spicy, tender, silly, thrilling, transcendent, routine, experimental, adventurous, tentative, passionate, hilarious, controlled, spontaneous, terrific or terrible, and sometimes many of these -and far more- at the same time.
If sex can be so great, how could the art of filming it to share with others inherently bad?
The answer -spoiler alert-, Capitalism (in all its patriarchal, misogynist, domineering glory), may not shock you, but there’s a lot to cover here, and I will do my best to start from a personal perspective, so please stay tuned.
I don’t know about the ‘inherent’ part, to be honest. A voyeur kink is nothing to be shamed for. Some small-scale pornography can be honest, loving, artistic, and over all much less problematic, dangerous to our psyche. This is not what I am talking about here, I write about the mainstream, main pages of xVideos, Pornhub, YouPorn slop that you consume. And in that sense, I am you, I have been you, I, at times, will be you once more before distancing myself again, for my own sake.
This letter is more of a story I want to share with you. A warning. You see, my own sexual experience and self-esteem have both been greatly harmed by my long-term pornography consumption. More precisely by the physical ideals and general conventions deeply encrypted into mainstream, heterosexual pornography (not that gay, bi, or pansexual pornography is much better from my comparatively limited experience). I have been combating that addiction for the greater part of my life, as I approach the mid-thirties, and this fight has helped shape, define my personal approach to gender and politics at large.
Some will say they are watching porn and are still thriving sexually, because of it even. It may very well be true, and in that case, hey, congratulations mate! Please do keep on reading, just in case. My own story is probably -at least I hope so- among the more negative ones, but here is my premise, what I want to warn you about.
Pornography, mainstream or more ethical, has, in varying degrees, a negative effect on all of us, whether we are conscious of it or not.
Before we embark on our journey down the rabbit hole, a couple of disclaimers. As I do not know where you are in your own story, a lifetime would not be enough to stop and explain every term I will be using. Therefore, I encourage you to be most careful and wise in your research. New words, concepts, brands, and categories are as many paths leading you to the heart of darkness. As you encounter them, do satiate your curiosity with care. Try your best to quench it with a simple definition, and if later, in the throes of inquisitiveness, you want to launch yourself into the unknown, O brave trailblazer, remember the essence of this letter, one of warning, of awareness, of discipline and self-control in your most scientific of inquiry (I’m sure!). You might just as well discover a fantastic new fetish as be hurled into a vicious slope knowing no brakes. But if you are reading this letter, I imagine you are already barreling down, so here is my attempt at helping you acknowledge the dangerous speed and showing you another path, more grounded, healthily anchored in empathy and a steady self.
Abandon not all hope, ye who enter here, but do proceed at your own peril.
Hard to pinpoint what changed in me that day when my sexuality was awakened for the first time, at least beyond experimenting with physical sensations. Probably a classmate mentioning sex or pornography, those taboo, adult things, alongside a budding biological sexual awareness. I had always been a very inquisitive child, and our family had just gotten an unlimited internet connection to catch on with the times. It was a Wednesday afternoon. My father had taken my sister to her horse-riding lesson. I knew I had a good three hours alone at our house. I was eleven.
My first foray into the world of pornography contained most conventions that were to poison my mind and alter my sense of belonging. I have always had a terrible memory, up until the end of my teens my childhood’s a blur interspersed with a few rare, vivid images. My first time watching pornography is one of those.
After a naïve Google search, I ended up on this site preview (one with alluring pictures to get you to pay for the full-length video or pornographic picture set, not too many subscriptions yet in 2002). The specific theme which led me to my first ever ejaculation was this: an old (late sixties) photographer luring in nubile young girls for a ‘suggestive’ photoshoot in bikini which only got increasingly sexual over time, with the photographer participating more and more in spite of the initial reluctance of the pure maiden, determined to stick to the initial script of feigned innocence. After a quick escalation, the photographer would then offer them a hefty sum to switch the nature of the photoshoot to a more pornographic one.
The girls, tempted by this green fruit of instant reward, their guard grinded down by repeated nagging and pestering, their sexual appetite allegedly whetted by the photographer’s touches, would then finally reluctantly accept the offer and there the preview abruptly stops, leaving at least the mind wondering about the depraved sights one could access for only 6.99$ per video.
From 11 to 23, I would masturbate between 2 to 10 times a day with an average of about 3 sessions lasting between two and 120 minutes. I wonder what activities occupied my time as much as that over those twelve years. World of Warcraft probably, and not much else, sad as it may be.
But the frequency here is not the main issue. It becomes a problem when put alongside the content to which I was masturbating. For, you see, after a timid start, I quickly discovered that novelty and even more, escalation of intensity, of perversity provided me with an ever more glorious erection and pleasure.
A short scientific digression is in order at this point. As a rational being, I believe in the need to understand an issue before resolving to tackle it, even though understanding the origin of trauma and the necessary steps to begin the healing process is one thing, putting it into effect is quite another challenge altogether.
Unfortunately for you, for us all, very little scientific research has been done on pornographic addiction compared to the general acceptance of sexual addiction. There lingers a stigma, encouraged by porn industry lobbyists, actively working in scoffing away any such claim as nonsensical, baseless accusations and categorizing ‘porn addiction’ as arbitrary scapegoat for weak-minded people.
The physiology of addiction, however, has long been uncovered by neuroscientists, its modus operandi is well known and can be easily applied to pornography.
Addiction stems from reinforcing neural pathways through a behavioral response to stimuli. Should a certain stimulus, say, an audio-visual representation of sex, be associated to an intense release of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, this reward system becomes more deeply engrained in our minds. The very low effort and availability of pornography coupled with an important release of pleasure-inducing chemicals make it highly attractive. If associated with, say, boredom, it can be turned into a reliable, extremely effective way to relieve it. The consumption of pornography becomes a routine act instead of a more periodic answer to spontaneous, biological states of arousal.
The reproductive or sexual urge is one of the most basic human traits, fundamental to the survival of our species. As such, it has been present from the very beginning of our evolution and is handled by the part of our brain called the limbic system. Video Pornography having only appeared in the last century, it left our primitive brain no time to evolve to the point of discerning reproductive fornication from masturbation and pornographic stimulation. Seeing and thinking about sex triggers the same exacerbated reward system as having sex does, and our limbic system, formed in an area known as the reptilian brain, has had no way to adapt to the overstimulation of pornography.
In a month of consuming pornography, you (and I) will easily see, imagine, and thus have sex with, as far as your mind is concerned, far more sexual partners than all of your ancestors probably ever have had, combined (given an admittedly intense month)!
More than this, these genetically diverse sexual partners, and the various suggestive acts they engage in will be far more novel, varied and arousing than anything evolution equipped us to deal with. The urge to reproduce with a desirable representant of another tribe yields a strong advantage in ensuring a wider-spread gene pool, improving chances of survival, often making them far more desirable. Same goes for online stimulation you can’t impregnate.
According to the Coolidge effect, both female and male animals exhibit renewed sexual interest whenever introduced to new partners. In addition to the surge in dopamine reached by new partners, new situations and sexual practices also contribute to a more intense experience. Combine this with the capitalist imperative of ever-growing engagement and thus profit, it dictates a gradual shift for mainstream pornography towards supernormal stimuli, towards more unrealistic standards as refined by the free market since pornographers providing more titillating content attract more customers, etc…
This is where the tone of this piece needs to shift. So far I have avoided personal characterization by sticking to general statements and for that, I apologize.
I now want to illustrate this well-documented process of getting used to a certain stimuli (thus receiving less dopamine) and escalation (in order to reach previously expected levels of dopamine) in addiction by retracing my plunge into the dark abysses of pornography through a list of all the kinks, all the categories I have sought and craved to satisfy myself sexually, in no accurate order of intensity.
Images of girls’ asses in bikini reddening after the repeated slaps of a cameraman’s hands became fetishized variety: young, teen, black, Asian, black on white, arab, Indian, big boobs, small boobs, BBW, babysitter, MILF, cougars and GILFs, teachers, students, college parties, threesomes, BLACKED, orgies, anal, double penetration, blowjob, handjob, footjob…
Then came the violence, both physical and psychological: hardcore, Throated, young throats, abused, exploited college girls, girlsdoporn, S&M, rape, gangbang, monster cocks, painal, gagging, face-fuck, bound, torture sex, cuckold, rough sex, extreme edging, fetish, bukkake, .
In between appeared the frighteningly limitless possibilities of hentai, of Japanese drawn porn which facilitated greatly the escalation with its distantiation from reality.
In no particular order: futanari, ahegao, futa on male, tentacles, mind break, tentacle rape, hardcore rape, hardcore torture, snuff, psychological abuse, chikan, guro, vore, BBM, Ahegao, hardcore gangbang, monster sex, nakadashi, defloration, bestiality, incest, incestual rape, teen porn, giant cocks, extreme gore, adultery and cuckoldry, humiliation, gay shouta, gaping, monster porn…
All of this is a mere list of categories that will take you a couple dozen seconds to read. It doesn’t in any way begin to hint at the accumulated days spent looking and masturbating at the stuff, at all the abuse being steadily embedded in my mind without any grounding real-life sexual experience, thus cementing aggressively unhealthy standards in my malleable psyche.
At least I am somewhat grateful not to have grown up in the age of AI and its readily available depraved possibilities, especially in using existing photos and videos of celebrities, real-life people. There is a whole new world out there that I will not be touching with a ten-foot pole, even for research purposes. My general warnings very much apply to AI. Please beware.
For every time I jerked off to a new potential mate, I got desensitized to the static, fixed beauty of a lone sexual partner. For every shaft I saw in close-up with a flattering angle that looked easily over 20 cm, my own shrank in comparison. Every gasp or feigned pleasure I heard, while they were penetrated by humongous dongs and laughing away normal-sized or smaller ones got engrossed in my impressionable mind as honest truth and infallible rule. When violence and abuse became the norm in sexual activities, despite knowing better, the idea got etched into my consciousness that it was what is expected and sought after by women.
These conventions, deeply embedded in one’s mind, can take an inordinate amount of time to overcome, as they become, oft in spite of will, normalized, leaving the addict to frantically look for higher, more extreme doses. Vanilla pornography as gateway to worse, more damaging pornography.
As I hinted above, my quest for sexual discovery was confined to the virtual space of pornography until the age of 23. Porn was the only sexuality I experienced of for most of my life. I’ve always known instinctively that the sexuality it depicts isn’t a faithful rendition of real life, and yet the conventions it follows ended up infecting me so deeply that the disconnect between porn and my own being resulted in unfathomable loss of self-esteem, fully fueling my self-hatred as the perceived distance between my own identity and desirable sexual traits seemed unbreachable.
Mainstream pornography is deeply misogynistic and patriarchal. A world where men exert sexual dominance over women. Not as a mere playful, controlling game, but as violent physical domination, where pleasure is directly linked to assuaging one’s power over the other. Sex as punishment, as complete disregard for one’s partner, their desires and needs. A twisted, toxic macho fantasy where women’s pleasure is absorbed by a male-centric view of sexuality, of strictly physical sensations at the cost of any semblance of psychological unison or connection.
Sex as mechanical performance inflicted by males to females. A violent ‘conquest’, ‘taming’, where actors ‘give’ orgasms to passive actresses, plastic recipients of pleasure, graced by such male gifts. You ‘have’ sex (passive), you ‘get’ laid, you ‘close the deal’, ‘get lucky’, ‘pull a bird’ and hundred other dehumanizing euphemisms.
Female orgasms as sole measure of ‘success’ of the male ‘performance’, exaggerated to absurd extremes, directly linked to the man’s worth, entirely dependent on the fetishized dick size. The bigger the penis, the more painfully intense and pleasurable the sex, the worthier the man, the more successful the sex.
A plastic world of unreasonable, unrealistic standards scarring both men (muscle-bound, narcissistic, unempathetic, powerful idiots with penises belonging to the 1st percentile of the population distribution, hammering away at blistering speed for hours on end, the longer the better) and women (subdued, dumb bimbos, victims lured by money, hairless, with bleached assholes, required labiaplasty, exploited…).
A racist world of colonialist fetishism of PoC, reduced to performing ‘bulls’, to ‘BBC’ (Big Black Cock), depicted as animalistic creatures craving the domination and insemination of white women in a play on the feared and manufactured threat to white hegemony. Colored women as colonialist fantasy, reduced to their ‘exoticism’, to an obedient slave-master dynamic.
Masculinity measured by how closely one resembles those twisted standards. I spent so many years hating myself for not being that man. For not being tall, domineering, well-endowed. For not being desirable. Having my right to self-love denied by absurd conventions, until I got lucky and found the right person once I was ready to open up, at the ripe age of 24, and weeks of gentle, loving play and reassurance. Before that was over a decade of avoiding girls and women as potential romantico-sexual partners altogether, the very few exceptions thwarted by my crippling anxiety and self-hatred. At 22, it took me a year of working and backpacking through Australia to gradually flirt, make out, get in and out of situationships around my own inability to share those deep fears and insecurities around sexuality. It all culminated when I ended up at a sexual point in a relationship with a dear friend I had fallen in love with, before being unable to either ‘perform’, or more importantly, explain why I completely froze before penetration, losing the relationship in the confused, shameful aftermath. Going back home to Paris, from her flat in Belgium, the realization that I had to accept myself hit me incredibly hard. Within the week I took the time to open up to my two male best friends (about my virginity, the deep shame, and some other issues, including the death of my father, suicide of my cousin, and other lingering trauma that had shaped me), welcomed their pure love and acceptance, healing balm to my soul. A couple months later, I sent a DM to the lovely German girl I had felt close to on the West Coast of Australia, and a few weeks later I was at her flat in Gießen, telling her why I had been so distant before we went our separate ways in Darwin, some 18 months prior.
The rest is certainly not history, the addiction didn’t end then and there, but by then the healing process was well under way.
I do not wish this early fate (or the rest of it for that matter) upon you, dear reader, and that is why I came here with this warning. Mindfulness is the name of the game, but more specifically in your porn consumption. Like all potential addictions, if you do sense a compulsion to fill up a void, seek help, preferably from trusted professionals, doctors and therapists, discuss it with trusted friends, or there also are plenty of online resources, just stay away from those advocating anything resembling a ‘grind mindset’. Abstention from pornography is important to lead you to more empathetic, respectful relationships, towards a love of the self, of your potential and future partners, and more importantly, also of all those beautifully flawed beings you will never consider as sexual partners and could build life-altering relationships with. The point here is to view your brothers and sisters, regardless of how they could affect your life, as worthy of being treated with kindness, love and respect, and ultimately this is what pornography deprives us of. In varying degrees of subtlety, pornography depicts sexuality as a contest, show of strength and status, between object and subject, between a passive and active agent, reinforcing values that ultimately alienate us all, ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ alike.
Please dig within yourself to see if your daily masturbating to pornography is changing the way you perceive others. See if you sense of self-worth, if your self-love is tied to your sexual ‘performances’ (including not being able to ‘perform’ or ‘get laid’). Try to do without pornography for a few days, focus instead on your own body, on memories, or genuine erotic fantasies (for that purpose, avoid recreating porn scenes or scenarios), I guarantee you there is a lot to be learned by this mindful practice. And if, when you do relapse, make sure you stay in control of that consumption, in its frequency, its intensity, the needs it answers to, and the impact you sense it will have on your body and psyche.
It’s all I’m asking, something I wish I could tell 11-year-old me, before he threw himself to the wolves, before he was flung there by the powers that benefit from blind, unreflective consumption of all sorts. Stay strong, give yourself the support you’d want to give your best friend, help your brothers and sisters where and when you can, only together can we overcome. And overcome we will.
I love you, dear stranger, best of luck in that fight and the countless others to come!
