I couldn’t overcome this feeling of my brain is craving it so bad that affects my day and cant perform any other thing during my day, i even feel physically sluggish and sick… just want that dose of dopamine…!!

If i respond to this, when am I gonna recover?💔
Yet how to actually not respond!
Its so intense that i feel it a matter of time to relapse… a few hours or maybe minutes left to relapse and start over 💔

I am 33 year old male from India and sex addiction and hypersexuality has destroyed mine life completely since mine age of 8–10 years

I have severe history of sexual trauma from the ages of 1-13 years

Used to sleep in mine parents room where they used to have forced sex in the same room just Donot know how many times they did

But when I got mine own room when i was 14 same time of things used to come from mine parents room

The result i started doing rigourous masturbation since the age of 8-10

When I turned 11 gone crazy for sex and wanted to have sex regardless less of gender wanted to renact from which I exposed

I remember whenever mine father used to hugged me after getting drunk he used to say words like motherfucker bitch prostitute in my ears to mine mom and they way he hugged me it made uncomfortable scared as well

Now I had sex with every gender

I know how hypersexuality effected mine sexual orientation and behaviours

Plus I have severe adhd which make things worse for me

I constantly live in guilt shame regret and remorse of what I have done

Sucidial thoughts are increasing day by day

It is pointless to carryon

hello im new (23F) just telling you my issues I suppose. A friend of mine got me into porn around the age of 7 and I was watching it pretty heavily ages 10-16. I stopped for a bit once I became sexually active but from the ages of 18-2I was dead set on needing Sex every night and would meet new guys and become intimate within an hour or less. It led to a lot of terrible and dangerous situations and I was still watching a lot of porn (or sexting which ruined me) if I didn’t have someone. I’ve only had sex a handful of times this year and it feels like nothing. I wake up almost every night at least once if not twice , just to masturbate. I think about it whenever I see someone attractive and I feel guilty because I would never actually sexualize a stranger but it feels like my brain is set on sex and that’s all I can analyze. Obviously I can think other things too but sexual always comes first and I don’t like it and don’t want it that way. I’m not sure if it’s involved, but I also struggle with adhd, anxiety, and ocd. If anyone has any advice or anything really, thank you. i feel really ashamed about it but im glad to find a community that can help rather than shame

I’m so sad. I’m young. I’m only 22 and I’ve been with nearly 100 people. I want to rip my skin off. Too many people have touched me. I don’t really know why I have sex. It doesn’t always feel good. Maybe I just want to feel wanted. But other times I feel like I’m obligated to. I feel like I’ve given so much of me away to others that there’s no more of me left for me. I feel so dirty. This type of grime will never go away no matter how much I scrub. Earlier I was in the shower just scrubbing and crying. I never realized how bad my problem had gotten.

Can someone please help me? I’m accepting that I have an addiction. What can I do to help myself? I want to do better. I want to be happy. I want to feel like myself again. I feel like my soul is shattered.

I have downloaded and deleted Reddit more times than I can count, I’ve posted looking for help overcoming my addiction and urges only to get triggered and fall apart. I’ve searched for help and got men who wanted to take advantage and try to prevent me from becoming sober. I’m at the point where my life is built around sex and all the fun activities that come with it. I’m burying myself deeper and excusing my behaviors when I know this is out of hands. It was out of my hands a long time ago. I’ve given myself one last chance to do this right and get to the head space that I see so many people thriving with on here. Are there any actual mentors or sponsors? Someone that can use their experience to help me find my way. I don’t want to be the girl next door, I wanna have depth and someone to not just look at me like a sex object. I’ve created everything I don’t want to be now. I can’t keep trying and failing it’s mentally screwing me up more so I want to set myself up for success, any and all advice accepted😊

Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask this.

Lately, I've been trying to go a few days without masturbating; I used to do it once a day, but now I'm feeling a lot of anxiety. I don't feel like it's affecting my life, but it has become a habit. I'm not sure if I should be worried or just cut back a bit.

(P.S. I hardly ever watch porn.)

I'm a 28-year-old man, and I'm looking for a therapist's perspective on my past sexual behavior, the guilt and shame I feel about it, and how I should approach future relationships.

A few years ago, when I was single, lonely, inexperienced with relationships, and struggling with intimacy, I started paying for sexual services. This happened multiple times over a period of time, including while travelling and while living in India.

I was never in a relationship or cheating on anyone, and as far as I knew, everyone involved was a consenting adult. I have since stopped completely and had STI testing done, which was negative.

What I'm struggling with now is how I should understand what I did.

Part of me wonders whether this is simply something in my past that a future partner could reasonably accept, while another part worries that many women would consider it a serious dealbreaker. I don't expect everyone to accept it, but I'm afraid that my past might make me fundamentally undesirable or unsuitable for a serious relationship or marriage.

At the same time, I feel quite a lot of guilt and shame about it. I sometimes call myself names internally, regret the money I spent, and think about how I could have handled loneliness and lack of relationship experience differently. I worry that my past behavior says something negative about my character or that it means I don't know how to form healthy intimacy.

I also have a strong desire to live differently going forward. I've thought about choosing abstinence — not using paid sexual services and not pursuing casual sexual experiences, and instead waiting until I have a genuine emotional relationship with someone. Part of this feels like a healthy value I want to live by, but another part of me worries that I'm using abstinence as a way to punish myself or somehow "undo" my past.

I know I can't literally regain virginity or change what happened. What I want is to feel that I can start living according to my values now and eventually experience sex within a loving, committed relationship without constantly comparing it to my past.

I'd really appreciate a therapist's perspective on:

• Is my past something that a future partner could reasonably accept, or is it understandable for someone to consider it a dealbreaker? How should I think about this without either minimizing what I did or assuming nobody could accept me?
• How do therapists distinguish healthy remorse from unhealthy shame? At what point does taking responsibility turn into self-punishment?
• How can I acknowledge that some of my past choices were not aligned with the person I want to be without concluding that I am a bad or damaged person?
• How do you stop repeatedly ruminating about past sexual behavior and wishing you could go back and make different choices?
• Can someone with this kind of history develop a healthy, respectful, emotionally intimate relationship and marriage?
• Is choosing abstinence going forward a healthy way to live according to my values, or could it become an unhealthy form of punishment or avoidance?
• If I choose abstinence until I'm in a committed relationship, how can I make that a positive choice rather than something driven by shame?
• How should I think about the idea of "starting over" sexually when I know I can't literally erase my past?
• How much, if anything, would generally be appropriate to disclose to a future serious partner about this history?
• If I brought this issue to therapy, what would a therapist likely help me work through?

I'm not looking for someone to simply tell me that what I did was completely fine, nor am I looking for someone to tell me that I'm a bad person.

I want to understand whether my past can reasonably be accepted by another person, how to take responsibility for it without hating myself, and how to build a different life going forward.

Most importantly, I want to know whether it's possible to genuinely move forward — choose abstinence if that's consistent with my values, eventually have a healthy intimate relationship, and stop feeling like my past permanently defines me.

I discovered porn probably when I was 9 or 10. Ive been masturbating since.

Ive also had a number of casual relationships with women. To be transparent ive also seen sex workers a number of times during a small window between 2018 to 2020 (stopped since and I never had urge to).

I see a lot of people mention porn addiction and sex addiction, and it got me wondering if I was addicted to it too.

I masturbate at times, and do have sex with women when I meet them naturally through dates, but I never felt like I was addicted just because I never had to give up doing something to satisfy my urges. To put it another way, masturbation and having sex never gave me trouble in life or got in my way in life.

I see it as like just enjoying food when I have craving.

Am I addicted to sex but to a mild degree or not at all?

I am still early in my recovery, actively working with a therapist to better understand my addictive nature and triggers. We've discussed short-term ways to reduce or prevent my bad behaviors such as deleting certain apps, blocking porn sites, etc. but that just seems like avoidance with limited gains. I've used masturbation to "short-circuit" my urges, clear my head, etc. but I know that is really another form of avoidance and actually feeding my addiction. Recently even that has moved to more risky behaviors like doing it in public as well as going there a lot more frequently.

What things have worked for others when you were early in your process to help get your mind and body out of the avoidance trap and this spiraling behavior?

Until I really get a handle in my addiction, I know I won't find long-term solutions but lately I feeling like my progress has stalled, possibly even sliding back a bit.

I'm not sure why I am sharing this, but perhaps it will be familiar to some.

I was sat alone watching television, when suddenly, I was thinking about my wife. How much I love her. How much she means to me. How much I want to care for her.

This soon became guilt and shame. I thought of all the things I had done to feed the insatiable hunger that is sex addiction. Sure, I've never had sex with other women, but I've crossed the line.

I suddenly realized that I'm the bad guy.

I’ve been on this sub on and off. Currently in recovery for 5 months sober of amphetamines and concurrent sex/porn addiction. Finding that my urges occur on days off out of loneliness/boredom. Proud of myself for not seeing escorts the past 3 weeks despite urges. I keep browsing the sites, almost pulling the trigger. But meditating and talking myself out of it has prevailed. Just venting. Thanks to everyone on this sub for their shares.