Question About Compulsive Masturbation & “Not Porn, But Porn” from a young man in his twenties.

“After I read your story I was literally in shocked as the way you illuminated my story. I’m so addicted that I masturbate 10-15 times in a day. I started at the age of 13 and even though I visited many retreats, priests, counselors and psychologist and confessed countless times yet nothing has helped me. It’s a cycle of temptation-masturbate-regret-delete search history from internet and put my self together and than repeat again and again. And one shocking thing to inform you is that I’m not into porn but I’m into women who are in (Fill in any blank here) and I get so much high on them. Believe me this addiction is worse than drugs.”

Darrell’s Reply

Sorry to hear you are struggling but glad to hear you are starting to reach out for help. The most important thing to know is that you can’t “solve” this problem on your own. You need help. You need a community of men who understand the struggle and who will walk with you.

Also, the uniqueness of your struggle not technically being porn is much less unique than you realize. The reality is that porn is more about what we do with images than it is about the images themselves. Many men, through the years, have talked about their first porn being JC Penny Catalogues or lingerie adds in the Sunday paper. Your particular content is more about your story and your arousal template than it is about anything else.

I have good news for you, bad news and then more good news. The good news is that you are much younger than I was when I got serious about recovery. If you are not yet married, then you haven’t done near as much damage to your future wife as I did to mine. If you are married, you likely have still done much less damage because I had been married many years before I started my recovery. 

The bad news is that your struggle is definitely at a point of a significant addiction. 10-15 times a day likely has also come with some physical pain and even damage or injury and that is not uncommon. It may also lead to impotence issues and a difficulty being aroused in a normal, healthy marriage. The bad news is you have an emotional dependency and addiction that can best be compared to a cancer that will destroy you if not attended to well.

Now the good news is it is treatable. You can break free from it. However, its going to take a lot of commitment and hard work. If you are willing to do the work, however, you can live masturbation free the rest of your life. Research and our experience has shown that men who plug into a group, do individual work with a good counselor, learn to connect with other men and actually understand and talk about their emotions make huge strides in their recoveries.

My encouragement to you is to order my manual, New Hope For Sexual Integrity, fill out our “Intake Documents” and then start plugging into our Zoom groups . I would also encourage to look for a face to face group of some sort in your area. If you are willing to do the hard work, I’ll be happy to help as I am able. If you just want to complain about how bad the struggle is without doing the work, then I’m sorry I won’t be able to do anything for or with you.  (Not saying that is what you are doing, just that many before you have so I like to clarify that from the beginning.)