Confessions of a Sex Addict (Anon)

It’s a beautiful Sunday morning and I’ve woken up next to a stunning 22 year old girl whose birthday we celebrated last night with a sumptuous dinner at The Shard before cycling across to Panorama on Boris Bikes for a few cocktails over-looking the London skyline. A marvellous evening filled with laughs, hugs and kisses.

I’m 29 years old, reasonably good looking, have a decent job and can tell a joke or two. Therefore, you’d be forgiven for thinking that I then took her back to my flat and had some pretty amazing birthday sex until the early hours. Unfortunately not.

I am a sex and porn addict and my mind has been gradually conditioned over thousands of hours spent online and between bed sheets with the opposite sex to find the firm body of such a beautiful girl unmoving; my mind wonders and unable to delve into a fantasy world unless it’s displayed before my eyes in HD and the contents driven by wherever my mind goes, I can’t perform. Instead, I’m left lying in bed looking up at the ceiling wondering what I have become whilst she lies alongside me thinking it’s her who’s to blame.

Of course she wasn’t but in a perverse twist, had she demanded something sexually obscene whilst wearing something slutty and whispering in my ear whilst I indulged her fantasy, maybe things would have been different…which only further highlights what a mess my mind has become from when all I used to need to get off was a peek at the lingerie section of the Argos catalogue.

This is becoming a well-publicised issue among men – young and old and sadly I am a product of uncontrolled and unfiltered access to the internet. My parents did their best to curb my time online – hiding the ADSL cable before wireless broadband entered every home and now phone. They even installed “Cyber Patrol” on the home PC but it didn’t take me long to notice it briefly loaded up in the bottom right of the screen and if I pressed CTRL + ALT + DEL in time, I could “end task” on that internet porn Nazi.

I had been brought up being reassured that masturbation was both natural and harmless – as indeed it had been throughout our entire human history. However, there is now a serious problem growing among our connected society. Children and adolescents are able to stream porn on their phones and sexting each other using apps like Snapchat, KIK and Whatsapp to send explicit images and messages. Adults are just as bad given ever easier access to other available (or not!) adults – the lure of greener grass at their fingertips with apps like Tinder, Grindr and Plenty of Fish allowing them instant access to literally thousands of other lonely souls within walking distance.

It is no surprise then that my mind struggles to engage with a “vanilla” sexual encounter. The irony is that I actually like this girl. Unlike the many many other women I’ve slept with over the years who I’ve lusted after during a night out and ended up having a quick and animalistic drunken shag in a taxi/car park/cheap hotel/expensive hotel/brothel/church yard/park/alley/toilet/sex club (delete as appropriate) before wishing I hadn’t immediately after climaxing. I used to be completely unable to control my desires and armed with the attributes mentioned in the second paragraph, I often succeeded in achieving the result I wanted. My online and real-life worlds had collided and I felt it was normal behaviour to screw anyone who’d let me.

My last relationship came to an end as a result of this behaviour and it was then I realised I had a problem; an addiction to pornography and sex that made me unable to behave as a moral human. I reached out to my friends who had absolutely no empathy for their mate who was screwing so many girls. What they failed to realise is that this was making me desperately unhappy. If I wasn’t fucking someone, I would be online until the early hours (at its peak, over 12 hours online in one session) watching videos, live streams, chat rooms, apps on my phone constantly seeking newer, fresh material to which to climax to. I would “edge” for hours on end before finally covering myself in cum and feeling absolutely worthless.

It took me a while to admit the extent of my problem but when my work started being affected by my lack of sleep, poor time-keeping and general sub-performance, I decided to look into support networks online (in-between masturbating of course) and found Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) held meetings all over London every night of the week. There were also numerous online forums available to men and women who wanted to end their addiction. I contacted a local SAA group and went along after work. The premise of these groups is to keep what happens and is discussed there completely private – something I will respect here. However, I will say it wasn’t full of horny women needing a quick fix!

Having attended a few SAA meetings, I convinced myself I wasn’t as bad as the other men and women there and instead started seeing a spiritual counsellor who really helped me initially try to understand how to control my behaviour through mediation and self-control. I am in no way religious or particularly spiritual but for a brief period I felt refreshed, in control and happy. But it didn’t take me long to lapse back into old habits and fall into a downward ever downward spiral.

I’d like to say I’m now clean but I’d be lying to you all. The simple truth is that this is a real issue in our society and not one to take lightly or trivialise. Just because I don’t wear a mac stroking my cock in public, doesn’t mean I’m not a pervert who lives his life constantly distracted by sexual thoughts and activity.

So what next? Well I hope this young girl will understand this issue I have and will help and support me whilst I continue to work on focusing all my attention on making our relationship work – after all, I’m told there is no greater satisfaction than being in love.