[kludgemaker]

I regret hearing the lies spoken during sex education when I was in fifth grade in 1987. The public school I was forced to attend brought in a sociologist to do the damage. She told us that we had to release our libido energy regularly - either by having sexual relations with another person or by masturbation, and that this was okay and healthy. Self control and abstinence were presented as being unrealistic.

This provided me with moral license from an expert (and indirectly from my parents, who had to sign the permission form to attend the lecture). One thing led to another, and it undoubtedly resulted in addiction; the endorphins and oxytocin produced by the human body and released during orgasm are worse than heroin. Bad habits form easily, and it's scary when you can't stop doing something that you believed would be just an experiment at age ten. The shame / guilt was hell.

If I could change anything anything about my past it would be to erase the immersion into that addiction at such an early, formative age. All other attachments of spirit have been easy to deal with - this one has not.

[tommypie]

I don't know if that helps ... but I didn't that without the sociologist and only with the help of the Internet.

I took me sometimes, I am much better on that. But it takes a shitload of work and just removing the blaming you put on yourself everytime your relaspe.

[simonebrunozzi]

It's weird to me that in my home country, Italy, "sex addition" is not seen as a problem at all, and I suspect this would be true for many other countries with similar cultural background (e.g. Mediterranean/Western cultures).

The first time I saw a movie where the protagonist was a "sex addict" and was going to group therapy, akin to AA, I couldn't believe it. At that point I was abroad, working for a US company. I eventually moved to the US a few years later.

At some point I realized that my bias towards this came from my cultural background, and it was actually hard to explain it to co-workers, or other Americans in general.

[_k7dr]

I have the same problem. In the sex education course I was given we were taught about abstinence and such, and there wasn't anything controversial as I recall. However I asked the counselor giving the lecture if it were possible to get an STD by masturbating. He said "no." For my adolescent brain, that was all the validation I needed to become addicted to this day.

Many factors have conspired to keep things this way:

- The only prerequisite to becoming addicted is having a body that is intact.

- There is practically nothing to prevent a curious teenager from masturbating at a young age, and the current literature regards this as normal, despite the fact that it can lead to addiction if it's not addressed. But teenagers are not about to let something that embarrassing be addressed by their family, especially for one as reticent as I was.

- Because the addiction is behavioral there is no physical substance to seek out and no seedy culture to involve oneself in, so there's no exposure that could lead to outside forces wanting to change you. You can obtain a limitless amount of porn anywhere for free and nobody would ever know.

- The physical consequences of using are mostly fatigue the next day, which can be mistaken as the result of anything. Mentioning sexual topics is taboo in comparison to admitting you are alcoholic, so nobody is going to guess correctly and intervene based on your appearance. It's an invisible addiction.

- When it's to the point that people online question if addiction to masturbation is even a thing, or if it's a puritanical argument in opposition to sexual freedom, it greatly diminishes the stances of people who actually have the condition and can't control themselves. Many are trying to decrease the shame around sexual things while the people that can't help themselves are left behind adding those movements to an ever-growing list of rationalizations.

- Being addicted to masturbating and/or porn is not as severe as being addicted to hard drugs or even alcohol. It gives you a sense that this is the "right" addiction to have if you're going to have an addiction at all, and makes quitting all but hopeless once it's taken hold.

- Admitting to this publicly opens yourself up to ridicule with the way the culture is set up. It's unlikely many would react positively to jokes about heroin users or binging alcoholics. Sexual humor on the other hand is practically embedded into every sitcom and countless memes and dick jokes. Addiction to masturbation is never going to be taken as seriously or at as large a scale as most other addictions.

The only good part is that the addiction is manageable for the most part and my lack of sociality has prevented me from going as far as casual sex. But I'm starting to have erectile dysfunction and a loss of satisfaction from physical overuse.

A part of me thinks that the way masturbation is meant to be a totally private activity closed off all routes for anyone to help me from a young age. It makes me wonder if trying to avoid all addictions would have been a hopeless endeavor from the start. Every time I admitted it to a counselor or therapist they either wouldn't take it seriously or didn't offer any routines that stuck.

Still, even though it is a rationalization for my own addiction, I am still glad I did not get addicted to alcohol or cigarettes or eating instead. It gives me pause to think how easily I could have started down that path with just a bit more openness to experience than I once had.

EDIT: And of course to prove my point about stigma I've been hellbanned for making this very post.

[Toutouxc]

Are you sure about the ban? I can see all your posts before and including this one (but none after).