WATCHING porn may seem harmless – but experts say the rush of pleasure it triggers in the brain can be addictive.
The number of middle-aged men seeking treatment for a sexual fixation has increased, with an average of two over-50s a week turning to the UK Addiction Treatment Center in London for help.
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Danny Wolfenstein*, 45, from Watford, watched pornography more than ten times a day. Here, the software developer shares his secret with Georgette Culley.
*Last name has been changed
WHAT began as an innocent curiosity quickly turned into an all-consuming addiction, eating away at the fabric of my existence like a relentless predator.
It all started when I started working more from home.
On days when I wasn’t at the office, I spent several hours a day on free sites like Fetlife, watching kinky lesbian role plays.
I spent every waking hour thinking about porn and when I could watch it again.
When I had to go to the office, I would watch it in the bathroom at work on my cell phone.
If my girlfriend was home, I would secretly watch behind her back.
I would tell her I was going to take a shower, but I would simply turn on the water and sit in the corner of the room taking my next dose.
I felt bad about lying to my girlfriend.
But how could I tell her the truth? It would crush her.
She would think she wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t do that to her.
Truth be told, we had a very healthy sex life before my addiction began.
We had sex almost every day and I had no complaints.
But pornography became my drug of choice – a toxic refuge from the harsh realities of life.
At first I enjoyed the thrill, but soon I was falling into a spiral of perversion and excess.
My three-year relationship began to crumble under the weight of my addiction.
The intimate connection I once shared with my partner faded when real sex became boring.
Insatiable obsession
She always suspected my porn addiction, but didn’t know the full extent of it until we broke up.
Sometimes she would see the sites I visited in my Google search history, but I always downplayed it.
My porn habit had warped my mind and I couldn’t get excited about trying new positions or locations. It was not enough.
Eventually this affected our relationship and we broke up at the end of 2022.
After our breakup, my days blurred into a haze of excitement and self-loathing.
My insatiable obsession infiltrated every corner of my life and I started missing work deadlines.
My boss didn’t know what was wrong with me and I was embarrassed to tell him.
Colleagues exchanged pitiful looks every time I went to the bathroom to secretly watch.
I spent so much time in the swamps that they thought I had some kind of embarrassing intestinal problem, but the truth was much worse.
Physically, the price was undeniable.
Sleepless nights in the grip of addiction left me a mere shell of my former self.
Dark circles appeared under my eyes, a constant reminder of the hours I wasted in pursuit of fleeting pleasure.
Neglecting my health and well-being, I stumbled through life in a perpetual state of exhaustion.
But even as I was on the brink of oblivion, the allure of escapism proved too powerful to resist.
People think that pornography is harmless fun, but for some it can become highly addictive.
But unlike other addictions, it is not taken as seriously.
If your weakness is alcohol, smoking or drugs, people take you more seriously, but I felt completely alone and broken.
It wasn’t until I hit rock bottom in the fall of 2023 that I finally recognized I needed help.
Almost free
I could no longer fight this alone.
My girlfriend had left me and I was hanging on to my job by a thread.
I finally opened up to a close friend about my secret demons.
I thought she was going to laugh in my face, but she was incredibly nice.
She helped me find Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous and, desperate to heal, I contacted them for therapy.
Their program is similar to the 12 steps for Alcoholics Anonymous.
Recovery is a slow and agonizing process, fraught with setbacks and relapses.
But with each passing day, I regain a fragment of my old self.
While the scars of addiction may never completely heal, I am slowly emerging from the darkness with a new sense of resilience.
I am no longer a slave to my impulses and every day I grow stronger.
Now, after nine months of therapy, I am almost free.
Of course, there are weak moments when I’m tempted to surrender to the flickering screen in the dead of night, but I haven’t yet.
I am determined to win this internal war – once and for all.
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This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
