My 22-year-old addiction to pornography has truly morphed over the years. I can only see the transformation as I sit and reflect on the victories I am currently experiencing.
When I first began getting involved with pornography, there really was no preference to what kind I encountered. However, my first exposure was through a magazine that progressed to internet pornography. From what I remember in my early teens and the internet being so new to our generation, I had so much at my finger tips. My search began looking for still shot images. The curiosity about the male anatomy had me searching for naked men. Over the years, as the internet expanded, so did my curiosity and hunger. My daily quest was to find the next rush feeling inside. At one point, searching out solo men wasn’t enough to get the same feeling. I really had no desire to look for women at the time.
It wasn’t til my early twenties that I began going beyond still shot images. I began hunting for free streaming videos online. The videos I was hungry for was to watch heterosexual sex. I wasn’t fully interested in the “actor” type looking people on the screen. I looked for people that I could somewhat relate to, more of an amateur type of feel to it. I wanted to know what sex was all about. It didn’t matter how long the clip was, as long as it was free I watched it. I eventually started downloading them, saving them to my computer or a disc. My addiction was out of control. But I didn’t know how out of control it could get.
The past four years is where I reached the bottom of my addiction. My preference towards heterosexual pornography morphed again and I found myself also interested and seeking out homosexual pornography, watching gay men. Then once more it morphed into seeking lesbian pornography. Since my early teens, I have questioned my sexual identity; it was dormant until now, and this moment in life fueled a raging fire inside of me.
All this time, I would only seek out free pornography. Then I arrived at a crossroads where I made my first purchase of lesbian pornography online and it was then when I realized, this addiction has taken me farther than I ever thought I would go. Yet I felt stuck and couldn’t get out. The guilt and shame cycle continued and deeper into lesbian porn I went. The same preference was similar, where I desired to watch women more of my age (early 30s). However, that didn’t stop me from watching lesbians who appeared younger. I also found myself desiring to watch lesbians, one being my age and the other woman being older than me (early 40s).
This forest fire in my heart continued to push me further than expected. Where I found myself involved with an older woman online were we would watch lesbian porn together. Nothing good came out of that two- year off/on relationship. Even quitting “her” was very difficult. (We had never met in person).
So looking back, pornography is a lethal drug. What once started like cocaine morphed to a need for heroine. Pornography was always combined with masturbation. There reached a point where certain stimuli didn’t have the same effect so I looked for the next riskier thing. I did find myself bouncing back and forth between heterosexual pornography and lesbian pornography, it truly depended on my mood.
But looking back to when I was 8-years-old, I don’t think I would have ever imagined the next 22 years of addiction, where it would take me and crossing me over a line I never wanted to cross in the first place. Thanking God for His grace and the freedom I now have walking away from this addiction.
-AmyChristine-